


Life Rolls On

by Kaiyoz



Series: Life Rolls On... The Series [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Abuse Flashbacks, Alternate Universe - Canon, Clint as a Kid, Foster Care Innacuracies, Gen, Harm to Children, Kid Fic, Medical Inaccuracies, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:58:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiyoz/pseuds/Kaiyoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's life takes a dramatic turn after an accident leaves him unable to stay with the circus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Accident

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this story for a little over a year now (along with twenty other story ideas). It's nearly finished and I'm just cleaning things up a bit. I have totally messed with the ages, canon, and medical things.
> 
> The entire story is so far about 45,000 words and I'll probably make it into a series.

Clint grabbed the trapeze that had been specially built for him to stand and shoot from and waited for his cue to swing out. He jumped on as the ringmaster announced “The Amazing Hawkeye” and swung out over the net, shifting his weight and balancing as he nocked an arrow and let it fly, then another and another at such rapid fire the audience could do nothing but applaud. 

When his quiver was empty, he jumped off the platform, landed in the net before flipping out and dropping to the hard packed dirt of the tent floor. He snagged a second quiver and began shooting again. Aiming at targets high into the air as the audience clapped at every shot. He changed his shots then shooting at the juggling oranges that the clowns tossed back and forth between themselves. When all the targets had an arrow through their center the ringmaster came in then and waved him away. 

The boy waited until he had no one watching before he grabbed a few of the freshly shot oranges, pulling the arrows carefully out of them before peeling back the rind and taking a bite. 

It had been a long three years in the circus and Clint was finally starting to be able to pull his own weight. Crowds came to see him, the child archer. He hoped soon that would mean Carson would begin paying him and Barney. They were thrown scraps but they had yet to have more than a few dollars in their pocket, relying on the kindness of the other carnies to sleep and have enough food. It was still better than foster care. Here he could escape, sure he’d gotten quite a few smacks, even a beating two or three times but he had fixed the problem and everyone had let it go. 

He could here Buck calling for him and he grimaced stuffing the last of the oranges in his mouth before going to find the other man. 

He stayed well out of reach as he came in sight of his mentor and Barney slumped on the trailer steps. “Yeah, Buck?” he questioned, hoping it was some stupid errand. 

“Get over here!” he slurred. The older man had hit the bottle again, Barney too. 

Clint stepped closer, poised to run. 

“You a good shooter, kid?” Buck asked, nearly falling off the stairs as he leaned forward. 

The younger boy knew the answer to that question, “Not as good as you Buck. I’m practicing.”

“You’re damn right you ain’t, Here’s a good chance to learn though.” He picked up a jar that been left on the ground. 

“Think you can hit this?” the older man asked, swaying. 

Clint shrugged. He knew he could but Buck didn’t need to know that. 

Buck reached over and put the jar on Barney’s head. “Think you can hit it now?”

Barney had stiffened under the threat, going eerily still even in his drunken state. 

“I’ll give you a bit of motivation, boyo. You don’t hit the target… I give you a slap. If I don’t hit the target you get to slap me. How about it?”

He didn’t give the little archer a chance to object, instead pacing a few feet away and pushing Clint’s bow into his hand. Clint picked an arrow off the ground, the fletching was mashed but it was usable. He took a long time nocking the arrow, hoping that someone or something would draw Buck’s attention before he had to do this. 

At sixteen, Barney was the epitome of smart and sure of himself to Clint’s eleven-year old mind and he couldn’t shoot at Barney. Buck grumbled and Clint drew back, sighting well over Barney’s head, he didn’t want to risk breaking the glass or worse, missing and striking Barney. 

He loosed the arrow and watched as it bounced harmlessly off the trailer wall.

Buck laughed loudly, snagging the bow out of his hand. He had no time to brace himself as Buck backhanded him so hard he spun into a nearby pole, his head bouncing off before he slumped to the ground. He reeled hard for a few minutes, the world shifting around him as he spit blood. He plopped down on the ground and sighed. 

Now Buck was taking his turn and Clint couldn’t watch. The dull arrow probably couldn’t pierce Barney’s skull but it could certainly mar the skin and with Buck’s strength could certainly pierce an eyeball. 

Buck fired and the arrow shattered the jar, glass pouring down around Barney’s ears. “Even drunk, I’m a better shot than you.” Nobody dared mention that he had been standing all of three feet away; it was nearly impossible to miss. 

The older man grabbed his bottle of scotch and staggered off. Barney glared at Clint as he stood and brushed glass of himself, following in Buck’s wake. 

The next morning he got up early in hopes of grabbing a bowl of oatmeal out of the big pot Mama Salva sometimes put on. He was just in time to grab a bowl and sneak off to enjoy it. Everyone liked to have a good breakfast before they started takedown for everything and packing. They’d be on the road for a few days and finding food was harder. 

He climbed up to the top of the rigging with some of the other aerialists to start unhooking their equipment. The aerial performers always took down their own stuff to save the ground crew from having to navigate the wires to unhook and remove things. After forty minutes of releasing tension and grabbing loose wires they were back on the ground rolling the net when a rookie decided he would help out. 

Clint was the only one on the other side of the net when the rook released one of the thick wires that helped hold the central rigging, normally this wasn’t an issue and something to be done next but the tension had to be released in every cord first. The thick wire whipped away from its tension point and smashed into the child archer. 

The boy screamed as the wire slapped his arm and back, his side and arm igniting with fire before he slumped unconscious. 

He dazedly came too as the strong man carried him to one of the trucks. He passed out again as he was hoisted into the vehicle. 

When he woke up next they were under the bright lights of the hospital. He was rolling on a bed as, what he thought were doctors and nurses, spoke over him. He felt like he was floating as he lay on bed. 

“The bruises on his face are not from this morning, they’ve had time to darken. And look how skinny he is; he’s not even clean. I’m calling social down.” She sounded angry. “Where are his parents? They said back at the carnival, right? What were they thinking? Allowing a little boy around all that dangerous equipment.”

A nurse or maybe a doctor leaned down and used a flashlight on his eyes. “I think he’s coming around,” she said to no one in particular. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked. 

He tried to shrug, his go-to answer when faced with an adult but his body lanced with pain again. 

“Don’t do that, sweetie,” she cooed. “You need to use your words. Where are you hurt?”

“Everywhere,” he mumbled.

She smiled gently. “You’ll feel better soon.”

She looked up and spoke to another man in a white coat, “We will need to take him to surgery soon. I’ll talk to them to get his parents, if you can start calling around to find us an operating room and a surgeon.”

She disappeared. He was having surgery? They were going to cut him open! Where was Barney? He tried not to cry but he didn’t want to die, surgery was for dying people. 

He huffed out a shuddering breath, his face getting hot and wet without his consent. He shuddered again, trying not to cry. 

“Hey, hey? Kid? Don’t cry,” the man said quietly. “Are you in pain? Just don’t cry… John!”

An older man bustled in then, his scrubs were covered in circus animals, like the ones he hung out with at home. Home. He wanted to go home.

“Hey, Clint.” His voice was gentle and soft as he smiled down at Clint. “Are you okay?” 

His feet were cold and his body felt stiff but that didn’t feel worth mentioning. He was hoping for a drink. “Water?” he asked. 

The nurse sighed. “We can’t give you any yet... but what about a warm blanket? It’s pretty chilly in here.” He came back after a second and laid a warm blanket on him, covering his feet. 

“I’m John, I work here at the hospital and I’ll be here most of the time. I get to work with the kids that come in for broken bones. Your arm was fractured… broken and now we need to fix it. I’m going to help get you cleaned up a little.”

He brought over a warm, wet towel and wiped his face off. It was only when John wiped his neck and sides that he realized he had been stripped of his clothes. He blushed furiously.


	2. Back to Foster

Meanwhile in a private room the doctor stepped in to see the two that had brought Clint in, she had brought the hospital social worker to help. 

“We need to speak to Clint’s parents now,” the doctor told them. 

The strong man, Tiny, sighed and scratched his head while Julie, the fortuneteller and sometimes circus doctor, pursed her lips. “Is it really that bad?” she asked. 

“Yes,” the doctor urged. “We need to take him to surgery.” 

“We can send officers to pick them up if they’re reluctant to come,” the social worker added. “If you can call them or talk to them and tell them we don’t care if they are illegal or anything, we just need them to sign Clint’s paperwork.”

“Shit,” Tiny said, putting his head on his hands. 

The fortuneteller saw no other way out, “Well then that’s a bit of a problem. Clint’s parents don’t travel with us.”

The social worker raised a brow but continued. “That’s fine then. His guardian can come sign his paper work over. All we need is the paper that says Clint is in the guardian’s care. Whom does he live with?”

“He usually sleeps in the trailer with the horses, near the feed box but sometimes he bunks in with Buck and his brother, Barney,” Tiny told them. 

“Is Buck his guardian? Is Barney his guardian?”

“Buck is the one that trained him and Barney is sixteen.”

The social worker looked stunned now. “Are you telling me that no one has guardianship of this child?”

Julie and Tiny shrugged helplessly. “We just brought him in. He’s never been hurt this badly before,” Julie started. “He’s been hanging around the circus for a few years now. He and Barney just showed up one day.”

“And no one said anything?” she questioned incredulously.

“Look,” Tiny started angrily. “You didn’t see the shape they came to us in. Clint was almost more black and blue then skin. Barney was skinnier than most of the poles we use to hold the tent up. So we kept ‘em… They’re pretty useful. What were we supposed to do? I don’t even remember what state we picked them up in! It’s not like we kidnapped them!”

The social worker frowned. “Can we get Barney in here? Maybe he knows? In the meantime we will get Clint appointed a guardian from the hospital while we sort this out. We need to start surgery soon.”

_______________________________________________________________________

 

It was a long time later when things appeared to be solved but Clint wasn’t sure how. They had run a lot of tests before things began to move along. The nurse helped him get into a gown that covered up his front. Then he was wrapped in a warm and soft blanket and left to wait. 

“Okay,” John said, stepping to his side. “We’re going to take you to surgery now. I know that sounds scary but you’ll be fine. We’re going to give you a little shot and you’re going to fall asleep. When you wake back up you’ll feel a lot better. I’ll stay with you and be there when you wake up, okay?

Clint nodded. “Will it hurt?”

“You won’t feel a thing. When you wake up I’ll have juice waiting for you. Do you like grape?” Clint nodded. 

Another nurse came in then, this one was smiling brightly. “Okay, Clint, we’re going to take you to the operating room soon. Are you ready?”

Clint nodded, again, bravely fumbling with his blanket edge. The whole bed began to move as he was wheeled away, John at his side. 

He was moved to a skinnier bed without all the nice blankets. It was brightly lit and stark white; there were machines and tables everywhere. He lay back on the bed and they slipped a needle into the port on the back of his hand. John told him to count back from ten, counting with him and before he reached eight he had slipped away.

He woke up to someone calling his name. “Clint? Clint?” a voice sing-songed. 

“Barney?” he tried to ask. 

“He’s not here. It’s John from the hospital.” 

The boy blinked his eyes open and saw the nurse’s scrubs up close as the man leaned over him. He felt weird, like his head might fall off if he moved too fast. He was snuggled back in his bed with blankets all over him. He wasn’t in any pain but he did feel sore. He fell asleep before he got his juice. 

He woke up off and on before he was able to drink his grape juice. John had done as promised and stayed beside him most of the afternoon. He hadn’t even gotten upset at Clint when he accidentally spilled juice on his blanket. 

Eventually he woke up all the way and had a light meal before nodding off again. 

When he woke up again a soft-faced woman was speaking with John. “Just the man I need to talk to,” she said when she saw him awake. 

“John here has been telling me about you,” she said with a smile. Clint could almost smell her false cheer. “What can you tell me about your family Clint?”

“I have my brother, Barney,” Clint told her. 

She nodded. “Barney is missing, Clint, he ran away. Where did you two run away from, maybe we can find him there?”

Clint shrugged, he knew it was one of the states but he could barely remember anymore. “Iowa… or Illinois… I think. He won’t go back to the fosters though.”

Her eyes lit. “Why not? You didn’t like foster care?”

Clint shrugged again and didn’t say a word. 

John took over the questions. “Were you in foster care Clint?” 

The boy nodded, not looking up. “Was it better at the carnival?”

Clint nodded, puling at a snag in his blanket. “Why was it better?”

Years later, Clint would look back at this moment and grumble at how they had been taking advantage of his doctored up state. 

“The fosters always yelled at me, I didn’t like them. When I get a smack at the circus it’s ‘cause I mess up, not ‘cause they are pissed off.”

She nodded, “Did your foster parents hit you?”

“Sometimes… most of the time I could get away before they got really pissed. I didn’t even do nothing!” Clint snuggled into his bed. “When can I go home?”

The social worker and nurse exchanged looks. “Clint… we can’t leave you with the circus. There’s no one there to take care of you,” John said softly. “We are going to find you a good home…

“No!” Clint cried. “I want to go home! Can I go home, please?”

“Clint, I’m sorry. We will…”

Clint sobbed, kicking his legs and shoving the blankets down. “Please, I want to go back. Please. Please!”

John sighed, “I’m sorry, Clint. We just can’t. They hit you. They’re leaving tomorrow and you need to be in the hospital a little while longer.”

Clint cried harder, frantically pulling at the blankets to bury his face in it. He couldn’t go back to foster care, he never wanted that ever again. His arm hurt but he was upset enough to ignore it. Eventually he was too tired to fight anymore and he slumped down against the bed, loud wracking sobs coming from his chest.

He slept solid through the night and the social worker, Amy, had come back in with Tiny and Julie in tow. 

“Julie… Tiny!” he smiled. He was getting to go home. He looked at the bag in Tiny’s hand and his face fell.

“Hey ya’, kiddo,” Tiny greeted him. 

Julie’s smile was brittle. “Hi, Clint… We’re moving on today. We’ll be going on to Springfield, then Connecticut next, New Haven, and then on to Newark, New Jersey, with any luck we’ll spend Christmas in New York, so we can’t take you with us.” She met his eyes and conveyed the meaning, if he could run away, he could catch up with them. “We brought some of your things though. The people said you could keep your bow but not the arrows. Sorry.”

Clint nodded, his lip trembling. He bit it to stop. Tiny patted him gently on the arm before they both left. He sniffed hard for a long time before falling back asleep.

_______________________________________________________________________

 

He woke up to a whispered argument going on at the door to his room, he stayed still and feigned sleeping. 

“…You want to stuff him in another over-crowded home? ‘Cause that worked out so well for him the first time? You saw that intake report. You saw the case file. You saw the x-rays. You stick him back in and he’ll run again.” John did not sound happy.

Amy sighed. “I know that… but what else do we have? Do you know how hard it is to place a boy his age? We only have a few homes with spots open. He’s going to need medical care for another few months… do you think most foster parents are going to take that in?” 

“Can you just look a little further?” John pleaded. 

She laughed with out mirth. “I’ll ask around some more, my assistant is already poking around any of the places that are within driving distance.”

Clint fell back asleep without meaning to.

When he woke again it was morning and he was feeling a lot better as he got out of bed, careful not to put any weight on his freshly wrapped arm. He pulled on the scrubs he had taken to wearing before heading to the bathroom. John came in then, carrying his breakfast tray. 

“Eggs, toast, and oatmeal,” John said. “Half-frozen milk, just like you like.” He came out of the bathroom and John helped him back into bed, tucking him in. “I’m going to do a few rounds and then I’ll be back. I’ll put the Disney channel on for you.”

He ate breakfast and watched TV until Amy showed up at his door again. He smiled as she stepped in. “How are you feeling?” 

Clint gave her a quiet “okay” as she settled down. “We found a foster home for you. It’s an emergency placement but it will be better than the foster homes you had in Iowa. You’ll be the only kid. He’s a short term placement, he’s usually for overnight or weekend placements but he’s agreed to take you for a few weeks while you recover.”

The boy nodded his head, picking at his leftovers. “Where will I go after him?” 

“I don’t know yet… He’s right outside to take you home? Would you like to meet him before we start checking you out of the hospital?”

Clint had resigned himself to being in foster care again. Escape was harder at a shelter, but in a foster home he would have plenty more chances to slip away. He could stay with them… at least until he could make his way back to the circus. They were going to Springfield, then New Haven, then Newark, and last New York. That would give him almost three months to catch up, at least. 

He wasn’t given a chance to answer before a man, younger than he expected, had stepped into the room with a nervous smile. His dark hair was flopping down into his face and his glasses were perched on the end of his nose. 

“Hi, Clint. I’m Bruce.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone would like more I can add more. :)


	3. Bruce

Clint nodded at the man. Amy stood to leave, “I’m going to give you a few minutes to talk to each other. I’ll talk to the doctors and make sure someone briefs you on what needs to be done for him. Clint, after today your social worker will be Jenna. She’s going to be by as soon as Bruce takes you home.”

Clint shrugged and didn’t look at her as she left. Bruce sat down next to Clint’s bed. “Another social worker huh?” 

The boy shrugged, going back to the TV. “I heard you were in the circus?” Bruce tried. 

Clint nodded, not looking away from the TV. He wasn’t going to cry in front of this stranger. 

The doctor walked in then and started talking but Clint tuned him out while he handed pamphlet after pamphlet to Bruce as well as a bag and some other little things before they were lowering the rails on the bed and pushing in a wheel chair. Bruce helped him into the wheelchair. He had his arm resting on a pillow his large arm wrap making it cumbersome to maneuver. 

They rolled down to the hospital exit where Bruce helped him into his little sedan, it looked like one of the junk cars Carson bought and drove until it broke before abandoning it on the side of the road. There were papers all over the backseat and Bruce made sure they were buckled in before pulling away. 

Clint held his useless arm and pillow as they drove. It was a fortunately short drive in awkward silence before they were pulling up outside a large apartment building. “We’re on the top floor but we have an elevator.”

He grabbed a few bags of groceries, including Clint’s bag and bow before showing them to the elevator. Clint followed warily; he hadn’t been in an elevator that he could remember. When the doors slid shut and it rose, he startled, his knees bending and he looked around nervously. 

“Been a while since you were in an elevator?” Bruce asked. 

Clint shook his head. “Never been in one.”

When Bruce had walked into the hospital this morning he had been expecting a lot of things, but an eleven year old the size of an eight year old hadn’t been it. A boy with a huge cast and a bruised face wasn’t it. But he was going to make it work. 

Jenna had called him to ask if he was available to take a boy in for a few weeks and he had said no. He was starting his research position just after getting his doctorate and wasn’t really able to make time to keep up with a boy. Getting a boy to and from school would take up time he was supposed to be video-conferencing, every morning at eight AM sharp. Jenna had called and asked if he could take him, he wouldn’t have to go to school while they figured out what to do with him. He’d be placed on independent study. He had said he would think about it. 

Then Amy had called and asked if he could take this little boy even for a few days. He had said no… but hadn’t given her a firm no. Jenna had called again and played his heartstrings about having no where to send the boy, he’d have to go to the teenager shelter with a fractured arm and bruised face, easy prey for the bullies at any group home. Bruce knew too much about bullies. 

Now he had an eleven-year-old boy for the next few weeks. 

Most of his ages mates had been excited to turn twenty-one because they would be able to drink, but Bruce had been excited because he could be a foster parent, something he had always promised himself he would do. He had taken in mostly preteens that needed a home to stay in while they investigated accusations. He was a transitional home, like the one he had used when moving in with his aunt. 

He opened the door to his apartment and waved Clint inside. The boy was slow moving not at all perky like some of the kids had been. He set the groceries down on the counter and showed Clint to his room, which was little more than a library and storage with a bed in it. He set down the boy’s bow and put his bag of clothes on top of the dresser. 

“I have a new toothbrush for you on the bathroom counter, it’s all yours. Um… Do you want lunch? You need some pain meds soon and I make a good grilled cheese sandwich. We can discuss some house rules while we eat.”

Clint nodded listlessly while Bruce went back to the living room. He followed the older man out and curled back up on the couch. Bruce had a tiny TV in the corner. 

“I don’t have cable but I have a VCR somewhere and some movies. I don’t really have time to use cable. Maybe you can tell me something… about yourself? Foods you hate? Uh… favorite activity?”

The boy sighed aloud. “I don’t like onions. I like to shoot my bow.”

Bruce nodded as he buttered bread. “You really can shoot that thing?”

Clint nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’m impressed.”

“What do you do?” Clint asked suddenly, looking suspicious.

Bruce met his eyes from across the room. “I’m a theoretical nuclear physicist but I do step in to experimental physics when it’s called upon.”

“What’s th…retical physicist?”

“Theoretical. Well… uh… an experimental physicist does experiments using lasers and… things like that. And a theoretical physicist… well… I pretty much do math and think about how the world works.”

Clint didn’t seem to understand but he nodded anyway. “Sounds hard.”

Bruce shrugged, giving Clint back his own gesture. “Some days.”

He dropped the sandwiches in to fry and walked over to the basket hidden on the bottom of the bookshelf. Inside there were a few toys, some children’s books, and some coloring books with crayons. 

“You can play with this if you like,” he said, pushing the basket across the coffee table. 

Clint kept his bad arm on the pillow he had taken to carrying around while he reached into the basket. He passed by the books and dragged out a coloring book. “Can I color in it?” he asked, holding up a crayon. 

“Of course,” Bruce told him, going back to the kitchen.

Bruce plated the sandwiches and poured two glasses of juice before going to fetch Clint and help him to the dining table. 

He walked in to a strange sight. Clint was bent over the coloring book with his arm braced across the top while he colored. His casted arm must not have been fairly effective at holding the book still because he had also folded himself so that his foot was holding down the coloring book. He was surprised at how neat the coloring was. 

“I thought your other arm was the good one?”

Clint startled and sat up quickly wincing at the yank on his arm. He shrugged, looking out the window.

“Okay, we have lunch on the table.” Clint followed him to the table where he sat his pillow on the table and took a seat. 

“I never done this before,” Clint sighed. 

“Eaten a grilled cheese?” he asked. 

Clint shook his head. “Fosters usually ate at the TV.”

The older man didn’t say anything for a long few moments. “Well… I sometimes eat at the coffee table. Did they tell you what medicines you are on?”

Clint shook his head. “Okay, well you had a shot of antibiotics before we left but you’ll need more throughout the next few weeks. When your arm broke there was some bone sticking out which might have got some… germs in it. They might make you feel a little nauseated… sick. So just tell me and we’ll see what we can do. You’re also on pain medication and an NSAID to keep the swelling down. We’ll keep you on that until your arm doesn’t hurt. In a week or so we have a doctor’s appointment and you’ll get a cast on your arm and get your stitches removed. If you start to feel sick… like in your stomach or anywhere else tell me, okay?”

The boy nodded. “My house rules are easy. If you need something or want something, ask for it. If you make a mess you need to clean it up. If you can’t clean it up call me to help. You will go to bed when I tell you to and stay in bed until six. You don’t yell or curse at me or anyone else okay?” He let Clint nod before he continued. “If you break the rules, you’ll be in trouble. You’ll have something you like taken away, like a toy or the TV.”

Clint nodded again. 

“Here are your pain pills.” Bruce handed him a few capsules. Watching him to see he swallowed them all. “They might make you a little sleepy so if you want to sleep, sleep. It’s no problem. I’ll wake you for dinner. I hope you like Chef Boyardee.”

Clint finished his entire grilled cheese and drank his juice while he listened to Bruce talk. The older man put the dishes away before turning to Clint. “Do you want to take a bath?”

The blonde stiffened noticeably and grew leery. “What do you mean?”

Bruce sighed. He prayed to God that the boy was just cautious and had not been subjected to pedophiles. “I mean I will wrap your arm in plastic and show you how to fill the bathtub, no shower. You lock the door, clean yourself, rinse, and dry off. Then you put on clean clothes. Your clothes from the circus looked a bit… ragged so Amy sent some sweats and clean under clothes along.”

“Okay,” Clint answered. He’d been warned about perverts in fosters and again in the circus but if Bruce was too nervous to say ‘underwear’ he probably wasn’t going to insist on washing Clint.

Bruce showed him where the clean clothes, toothbrush, and essentials were and after wrapping his arm up left him to it. 

Before he closed the door he added, “Uh… this is awkward but if you… need help… call me. I don’t want you hurting your arm trying to get a t-shirt on or something.” Bruce ducked out of the room before Clint could answer. 

Bruce rattled around his apartment, starting on the work he’d need to begin tomorrow as well as starting a list of people Clint would need to see to start placement. An education specialist was a priority, Clint was probably behind from his years in the circus. A therapist would be helpful too.

He heard the bath turn on and off several times. After a solid twenty minutes he heard a crash and he ran to the door. “Clint?” he asked. “Are you okay in there?”

“Yeah! I’m fine. Just… I’ll clean it up,” Clint’s muffled voice told him. 

“Get dressed first and I’ll help you clean it up. I don’t want you falling, I don’t want to go back to the hospital tonight. It looks really bad on me.” His joke fell flat. 

Clint cracked open the door before stepping out. “I couldn’t get my shirt on and I couldn’t get the plastic off. My head feels all… off.” The boy’s hair was still dripping wet. He hadn’t realized that Clint was as skinny as he was, ribs poked out highlighted by the molted bruise that striped around his upper body. God, he needed to feed that kid. Clint seemed a bit lost so Bruce stepped in. 

“You’re on a lot of pain meds right now. I’ll unwrap your arm.” He pulled at the tape before it unraveled enough to slip the plastic bag off his arm. He helped Clint get his arms through his shirt before leaving him to finish himself. The boy made his way out to the couch before he flopped down. 

Bruce brought him out a dry hand towel and dropped it on his head. “You’re going to catch a cold… Geez, I sound like my aunt.”

Clint awkwardly brushed his hair with the towel, one hand trying to coordinate the action, before Bruce took over, scrubbing it vigorously. His hair was thick and hard to the touch. Clint gave him a little grin when he pulled the towel away. 

“Jenna will be here in a few to meet you. Let’s get some socks on you.” He found a pair of tube socks and a large sweatshirt that could handle Clint’s thickly wrapped arm. “Wow, you are stylin’,” he deadpanned. With his foster kid swimming in sweats and tube socks some days he wondered why the state let him keep kids. What person in their right minds trusts a 23-year old with a kid? Then he realized that if he had a baby at eighteen he could have a 4-year old. He shuddered at the thought. They must have been desperate for foster parents when he signed up, he thought, self-depreciating. 

Five minutes ahead of time, Jenna knocked on the door. He scrambled to answer the door, nearly tripping over a potted plant. He ignored Clint’s guffaw to open the door. 

“Hi Jenna,” Bruce said, waving her inside. 

“Hiya, Bruce! This must be Clint?” The little boy had sunken into the couch upon her arrival and didn’t acknowledge her with anything but a head bob. 

“This is Clint. He’s a bit quiet right now, he just took his pain pills, so he might be out cold in a few minutes.”

“Can I have some coffee? This is my final visit today and I still have to make it through dinner with my in-laws,” she laughed. 

Bruce took the subtle hint to let her interview Clint for a few minutes and left the room. 

Clint watched Bruce leave before leveling the woman with a steady gaze. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked, sitting beside him on the couch. 

Clint shrugged.

Jenna looked him over. “You look like you’re dressed to the fours…”

The joke went over Clint’s head but he smiled anyway. “Are you happy here?”

Clint nodded and shrugged. “I’m going to need some words here Clint. Where are you sleeping?”

He sighed aloud. “I’m gonna sleep in the room right there,” he said, pointing. “Tonight we’re having Chef Boydee. I don’t know what that is but Bruce sounds excited.”

She smiled. “Well you’re a funny one. Has Bruce explained the rules?”

“Yeah, he has rules.”

Jenna wrote a few things in her portfolio. “What rules?”

“Don’t yell. Ask for things. Clean up. Go to bed when I’m told.”

Jenna nodded, jotting notes. “And will you be okay staying here for a little while?”

“Guess so.”

She smiled gently and handed him a card. “Well that’s good. If you need anything or have trouble you can call 911 or call this number to get help. You won’t be going to school for a while, we are going to have you meet with people before you go. Are you okay with that?”

Clint nodded, pulling the sleeves of his sweatshirt down and over his hands. 

“Okay… I’m going to be looking around for a more permanent home for you, okay?”

He looked away, eyeing the window and the fire escape beyond. “What if I want to stay here?”

She smiled sadly at him. “Bruce isn’t a permanent foster home. He only watches kids for a little while.”

“Oh.”


	4. Early Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made Clint very anti-social or socially phobic. I base this off of my assumption that he has had very little socialization. I would assume taking Clint to public places was not a priority either as a child or circus performer. Clint’s other behaviors are formed off of my time spent working with emotionally disturbed children. 
> 
> And remember, my medical expertise comes from nothing more than my imagination, a tiny bit of research, and many visits to the ER. ;)

Bruce was halfway out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee when he heard Clint ask to stay in Bruce’s house. The boy was already ready to throw his lot in with Bruce. It broke Bruce’s heart just a little bit. 

He announced his arrival and handed the coffee to Jenna and a hot chocolate to Clint. He acted like he hadn’t heard the question and smiled blandly. 

“Thank you for talking to me, Clint. Can you show me around, Bruce?”

“Sure, just let me put on a movie.” He quickly clicked on a newer Disney movie and left it in front of the boy. 

He showed Jenna around the little apartment. When they came back to have Jenna bid Clint goodbye, Bruce was surprised to see Clint slumped over, drooling onto the couch.   
He smiled at Jenna and put a blanket over the boy and went to start dinner. 

Halfway through spreading butter on a loaf of French bread he heard a noise at the door and turned to see Clint standing there, his blanket wrapped like a cape. 

“You woke up. Dinner is almost ready. You hungry?” Clint nodded. “I still need you to use words,” he urged. “Can you set the table?” he gestured to the glasses and silverware laid out.

“Yeah,” the boy answered. Clint took them one-handed to the kitchen table. He put the cups and silverware in the wrong places but Bruce appreciated the attempt. “Sit down and I’ll get the salad.”

The boy nodded and waited patiently while Bruce set down a salad and bowl of raviolis with garlic bread beside him. He showed Clint how to put dressing on the salad and watched the boy all but inhale the salad, licking the ranch out of the bowl before diving into the raviolis. He used his fingers at some points, only using the fork when Bruce reminded him.

“Slow down,” Bruce told him. “If you want dessert you need to make sure you don’t choke to death on the first round.” Clint took smaller bites. 

It didn’t take long before Clint was exhausted from the day’s excitement and Bruce showed him to his bed. 

“If you need anything, my room is right at the end of the hall just knock and, uh, come on in. I’m going to leave the bathroom light on and there’s water on the side of your bed. Tomorrow’s Sunday so we will probably find you some less… awkward clothes, so… shopping.” He shuffled his feet awkwardly as Clint climbed into bed. “Sleep tight.”

Clint waited until he heard Bruce return to the living room before he replied, “Good night, Bruce.”

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Getting through the store had been harder than he had anticipated. It was quiet for a Sunday morning, only a few shoppers but Clint had stiffened when they had stepped out into the parking lot. It had taken coaxing and a bit of bribery to get Clint to walk towards the store, even with no one waiting in the entrance, the boy had balked. He kept Clint’s hand on the cart and avoided aisles with people in them.

Clint had kept one firm grip on Bruce and avoided walking near people. He had to keep in mind that Clint had been in a very small social circle for most of his life. At one point, Clint had just stopped walking in the middle of an aisle, panting. Bruce had cajoled and found Clint a soda to give him something to do. The boy had unfrozen long enough to make it to the end. It was the longest thirty-minutes of his life.

“So… purple?” Bruce asked as they checked out of the store. 

“I like it,” Clint defended quietly, his eyes glued to the cashier that scanned his items. He had a new duffle bag, black with purple highlights, a few purple notebooks, a pair of flannel pajama pants, jeans, and a few t-shirts, half of them purple. The highlight of the purchase had been a purple pillow case and purple fuzzy socks, both picked out of the girl’s section but Clint didn’t appear to be aware of the gender segregation and Bruce wasn’t going to point it out. He liked that Clint had yet to have those stereotypes. 

At the University library, Clint had picked out a few books that looked interesting while Bruce picked out a few that the tween should have read at some point or another in his education. The library was blessedly empty, only one or two people in all the stacks. Bruce ordered some sandwiches from the university cafeteria while Clint anxiously waited on a bench outside. The boy had had to decide between joining Bruce in the cafeteria or waiting in the empty bench in the cold. He had picked the bench, keeping an eye on Bruce’s bag and car in the faculty parking lot. 

By the time they had picked up Bruce’s notes Clint had fallen asleep in the front seat of the car. Bruce had a fortunate job at school, a research position where he needed to be on campus only to perform experiments or use the lab’s super computer. Unlike most doctoral research fellows he needed very little supervision so he had been awarded the chance to work from home, the university didn’t mention that it also saved them from having to give out space for an office and lab. Each morning he checked in with his supervisor to report on his latest progress or failures. With any luck in eight months he would be awarded a true research position and off to study gamma radiation in New Mexico. 

At about midnight, Bruce had decided that it was time for him to lie down before tomorrow’s admittedly busy day. He peeked in Clint’s room one last time and saw only an empty bed. 

He nearly panicked but decided to look around instead. The window was shut and he could harsh pants of breath. He got down on his knees and let out a sigh when he saw Clint’s skinny back under the bed. Rather than reach in to grab the little boy he spoke to him. 

“Clint? Clint? It’s Bruce. I need you to wake up now, it’s just a bad dream. I’m here and you’re safe.” He was suddenly thankful for the psychology courses he had taken through college. “Come on, Clint. Wake up,” he called softly for long minutes until Clint seemed to wake up suddenly with a cut off shout. 

The breathing evened out before he Clint ask, “Bruce?”

“You’re under the bed, Sprocket. You want to come on out?” Bruce asked, backing away. The eleven year old uncoiled from under the bed before climbing back into bed. 

“You okay?” Bruce asked. No matter the answer he knew the truth. 

Clint shivered. “Fine. I just…” he trailed off, slumping down in bed. “Do I gotta go back to sleep?”

Bruce knew forcing the boy back to sleep would just be a cruel way to leave him with his thoughts. “Do you want to go lay out on the couch? I can get a coloring book for you. Maybe a soda? I’ll let you turn on the TV but no getting up and running around. Keep the volume down.” Clint nodded, giving Bruce a shaky smile. 

“Do you want me to stick around?” Clint shook his head as he snuggled onto the makeshift bed. 

Bruce brought him a Coke and a coloring book to soothe his mind. He showed Clint how to play The Aristocats in the VCR. “If you want to talk or just want someone to sit with you, just call for me. You want me to leave the light on?”

Clint nodded and he left Clint to it. 

When he got up in the morning he almost forgot all about Clint before he heard the buzz of the TV. He looked into the living room and the boy was unconscious on the couch, still upright.

He let Clint sleep a little more while he went to make coffee and put breakfast on the table, also known as get the cereal boxes out of the cabinet. He went to Clint’s side and gently knocked on the coffee table, getting the boy to wake up. 

“Uh,” Clint moaned. He appeared to whine after a moment, clutching his arm, then whimpering. 

“Clint? You okay?” he asked. 

Clint shook his head, sniffling. “My arm. My arm,” he grunted, refusing to move the appendage. 

Bruce realized that Clint must have put weight on it in the middle of the night. “You need to lay down.” He tried to ignore Clint’s quiet whimpers as he helped him to lie down on the couch but it wrenched him each time the boy made a noise. “I’m going to go get your pain pills, take some deep breaths and try to relax.”

He snagged a banana and all but force fed Clint the pills and banana. “How does it hurt, Clint? Do you feel any blood?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! It just hurts,” Clint whimpered, his eyes closed. 

He managed to get Clint to extend the arm out over the coffee table and carefully undid the soft cast, then unwinding the bandages around his arm. There was no bleeding, his fear had been that a blood vessel had been opened when a bone shifted. Nothing appeared amiss but he wrapped the boy’s arm and called the emergency number he had been given to consult with post-surgery. 

“Hi, I’m Bruce Banner calling about my… foster son, Clint Barton. He had surgery two days ago to repair an open fracture of his radius and now he’s complaining of pain. I looked and everything appears okay, should I take him to the emergency room?”

“Thank you for calling, let me just look up your case, Clint Barton correct?” She clicked for a few moments before coming back. “Was he on his painkillers at the time?”

“No, I just gave them to him.”

“Have you been staggering his pain killers?”

“No, the doctor didn’t mention that.”

“Okay, well what I’m going to have you do is start giving him ibuprofen along with his prescription, staggering the ibuprofen about four hours after you give the prescription. Continue to give him the prescription on schedule but wake him in the night for a pill. If the pain does not abate within the next twenty to thirty minutes or if the pain worsens or there’s an outward problem, take him to the hospital. And definitely call 911 if something severe happens, especially if he loses consciousness or is bleeding.”

Bruce nodded to himself, watching a sweating Clint anxiously. The boy seemed to be handling the pain. He was mumbling to himself but Bruce couldn’t understand what he was saying. 

“Okay. Would an ice pack or heat pack help? Anything?”

The nurse started up then, “Have him raise his arm above his heart to reduce the amount of blood there and it will help with the swelling. Also an ice pack around his arm might help. Wrap an ice pack in a heavy towel and wrap it around his upper arm.”

“That will constrict the blood vessels… will that be okay for healing?” Bruce questioned. 

“You sound like you know plenty,” she chuckled. “As long as you don’t keep it on all day, just enough to relieve the pain. Only keep the ice on for a half an hour every few hours. If it hurts take it off and try switching to a heat pack.”

“I took a few biology courses. Thanks for all your help,” Bruce said as they said their goodbyes and hung up the phone. 

He could finally hear Clint clearly. “I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s okay,” the boy whispered over and over again, his eyes closed and his teeth clenched.

He sat down on the couch near Clint’s head; he spread a blanket out over the boy and helped prop his arm up on a pillow. “How is your arm? Can I get you anything?”

Clint shook his head, turning away and trying to huddle around his injured arm. 

“I’m going to go make you a smoothie and I’ll put on a movie for you… sound good?”

The boy nodded, snuggling under the blanket on the couch. He picked out another of the four children’s movies he had and went to blend some fruit, juice, and yogurt for a smoothie. He put the cereal away; Clint was not going to be able to be at the table for a while. 

He split the smoothie up and stuck a straw in each. 

He could hear Clint mumbling as he stepped into the living rom. “It’s okay, I’m okay. It’s okay, I’m okay,” was murmured over and over again until Clint seemed to have calmed himself. 

A few hours later Bruce was assured that Clint had in fact just laid poorly on the arm, he was still sleepy but out of pain. Bruce had flown through his morning meeting and had managed to get some work done while Clint slept on and off. Even when he was awake the boy would do nothing more than stare at Bruce’s calculations. He had to all but bribe Clint to eat, going so far as promising to take him to a video rental store if he ate dinner.


	5. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I fast forward a bit.

The next morning, Bruce did his morning meeting and just as he was signing off he heard the unmistakable sound of a child throwing up. He quickly bid the department head goodbye, before taking off for the living room. He held his breath against the smell, as he surveyed the living room he noticed his child archer was missing. Rather than hunt down the boy he went to clean the mess. He opened up the windows and went to grab a paper towels and plastic bags. 

He noticed his pantry door ajar, he listened closely for a moment and heard, “It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.” 

He said nothing, letting Clint settle himself down. Thankful for wood floors and Resolve Carpet Cleaner he had the mess gone in minutes. 

“Clint?” he called. “Clint, come out please. I’m not mad.”

He waited for a response. Nothing. “Clint? Can you at least tell me where you are? I just want to make sure you’re okay and I don’t need to take you to the hospital?”

Silence still. 

“Clint? Please?”

He listened and after a moment he heard a quiet, “In here.” He stepped to the pantry and opened the door, sure enough, on the top shelf between the waffle mix and laundry detergent was Clint, his face peering from between his knees as he looked down at Bruce with a mix of anxiety and exhaustion. 

“Why are you up there?”

The boy shrugged, not meeting Bruce’s eyes.

“You want to come down then? Do you need help?” Clint shook his head quickly. “I’ll wait in the living room then.”

He went to sit down and wait, the October breeze was quickly chilling the room but was also getting rid of the lingering smell. 

Clint eventually stepped into the room but stood well away from Bruce. 

“Do you want to brush your teeth?” Bruce asked. 

Clint nodded and disappeared, back a quick minute later. “Are you okay?”

The boy paused, considering. 

“Tell me the truth, please. We have to go to the doctor today and if you aren’t feeling good, he will be able to help.”

“I feel like I’m gonna’ barf… all the time,” Clint confessed. “And I’m hot… shaky, like I used to feel when I had to do trapeze and then go and do my routine too.”

Bruce noted that all in his head, he opened the first aid kit he had left under the coffee table and pulled out a thermometer. “I want to put this in your mouth, under your tongue, can you come sit by me?”

Clint cautiously sat down next to Bruce and let the older man slide the thermometer into his mouth. It beeped and Bruce frowned, 100.3° F. Warm but not life threatening. 

“Well, that’s why you’re throwing up. Do you think you can eat anything? Sometimes a bit of toast and soda will help. I’ll put it out but you don’t have to eat it. I want you to lay down though, do you want to go to bed or on the couch?”

Clint pointed at the couch. “Okay, I’m going to put a little garbage can in here and when you have to barf I want you to throw up in there if you can’t make it to the bathroom. Don’t try to hold it in, okay?”

Clint nodded, curling up on the couch. Bruce buzzed around for a while before dragging his whiteboards back out and staring. Clint threw up twice more and Bruce never complained about tying off the bags and tossing them out. He tried to keep Clint hydrated and full of his pain pills and antibiotics but it was hard with the vomiting. He was thankful when noon came around and he climbed with Clint in the car. The boy was miserable, shivering in a sweatshirt and hunched over his bucket. Fortunately he didn’t vomit but he looked very green. 

At the doctor’s office they had a long wait, he could only comfort the tween by rubbing his back as he was hunched in the hard plastic chairs. Bruce squirreled Clint away in a corner where the audience couldn’t stare. It took Clint vomiting three times for them to get moved into a room. 

“So, how’s it going?” the surgeon began.

Bruce grumbled under his breath, the surgeon hadn’t bothered to even read the chart. “He had an open fracture in his arm. He had surgery four days ago. He’s been vomiting since this morning and he said he’s been feeling sick for longer. He was in a lot of pain yesterday morning from laying on it wrong.”

“Oh, yes, I remember him know. Emergency room. He’s a circus performer right? Why don’t you lay back on the bed Clint and I’m going to unwrap your arm. If everything looks okay I’ll be putting him in a different cast.”

Clint looked to Bruce, Bruce nodded his head and Clint lay down. Bruce scooted closer and brushed his fingers on Clint’s open palm. The boy clenched his fingers around Bruce’s as the surgeon began to unwrap his arm. The surgeon prodded at a few points, pausing at Clint’s shudder. He asked Clint to move his fingers and asked him questions until he felt satisfied. 

“Well bad news is he appears to have a mild infection, I’ll be upping his antibiotics and giving him something to keep him from vomiting. These drugs will be quite a bit stronger. The good news is the bones seem to be holding well, but I’ll have another x-ray done after the nurse gives it a soft cast.”

Then it was a whirlwind of nurses, doctors, radiologists, and exam rooms, before they were finally released with new prescriptions and a large metal frame to strap Clint’s arm into. Clint was drained from the amount of people touching to him and talking to him. One of the better nurses managed to get Clint some juice and a package of Oreos. They gave him a shot to keep any pain from the strain of today and released him into Bruce’s care.

At the drug store Clint was somewhere between exhausted and fretting. Bruce almost took him home but they had to get the prescription and he needed to keep an eye on Clint. He was still carrying his “barf bucket,” as Clint had dubbed it.

It was a few days before Halloween and the doorway was teaming with people coming in and out. He stood near the trunk of the car watching people hustle in and out. He had spent his formative years hidden in a carnival, Halloween was probably fairly novel.

He gestured for Clint to follow him and moved briskly through the automatic doors. They were barely inside before the overwhelming sight of shouting kids, costumes, and candy unnerved the boy. He felt Clint grab his jacket, holding tight as they made their way to the back. They grabbed the prescription and made their way to the video rental area. He encouraged Clint to pick out an older movie, “The Land Before Time.” It had some cute little dinosaurs on the front, not what he had expected an eleven year old to pick. 

Bruce shrugged and continued his way out of the store, stopping to grab some milk and bread before leaving. Just getting the necessities before Clint collapsed in anxiety. At the case towards the exit of the store, he noticed Clint eyeballing the ice cream tubs. 

“Do you want some?” Bruce asked. He had been reminded once again at the hospital that Clint needed to put on weight. The young man nodded hopefully. 

“Which flavor do you like best?” Bruce asked. 

“Mint,” Clint said, pointing out the green tub. 

Bruce grabbed a tub. “That’s great, mint’s my favorite too… But if we’re going to do ice cream we’re doing it right. Can you grab the whipped cream from that case while I grab the hot fudge?”

The boy nodded nervously, releasing Bruce’s jacket to grab a can of whip. Bruce waited patiently as Clint looked through the selection. He grabbed three cans before jogging to Bruce. “Which one?” he asked, holding out his armful of cans. 

“This one,” Bruce pointed at one. “It has heavy whip and it’s made of cream.” Clint put the others back before proudly carrying his can of whip cream to the front, one hand holding Bruce’s jacket.

Bruce would count this as a win.

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Over the next few days it was an up and down battle to get Clint to eat and Bruce was getting frustrated. The medications made Clint sick and unwilling to eat. However, Clint had to put on weight, though at this point, Bruce was just hoping he didn’t lose weight. 

The pair had begun to bond, Clint fit easily into Bruce’s life, he entertained himself but happily listened while Bruce talked and bounced ideas around. He cleaned up and he gave Bruce a schedule, he couldn’t get lost in physics with an eleven year old that needed dinner. He was pleasantly surprised to see progress in his gamma radiation work, apparently sleeping and eating regularly helped his brain processes. 

On Thanksgiving, Bruce actually bought all the food for a traditional dinner. Sure, the cranberries were canned, the stuffing was boxed, and the turkey was pre-cooked but Clint declared it the best meal he had ever eaten. 

Later that night, Bruce had found Clint crouched on the rail of the fire escape one arm threaded through the ladder’s rungs to hold himself up, the other arm holding a roll from dinner. Bruce hadn’t screamed but it was a heart stopping moment. He decided rather than forbid Clint from coming out here he might as well just set a limit. 

“The view’s good, huh?” he asked carelessly.

Clint nodded, lost in thought. 

“I don’t mind you being out here but if you could stand on the floor I’d feel better.” The boy had acquiesced and jumped back to land on the metal, making the entire structure shake, instead he leaned out over the rail, still looking at nothing. Bruce left him to his thoughts. 

Clint had nightmares a lot, some days Bruce would come down the hall to find Clint sitting quietly in the front room after a nightmare. Bruce would offer him something to even out his blood sugar or boost it. He didn’t talk about his nightmares but Bruce did note their frequency, he’d need to talk to his counselor about them at some point. He was never crying when he came down the hall but the stains on his sleeves and pillow always told Bruce a different tale. 

At the end of those eight long weeks Clint was declared healed of his arm break and he was actually beginning to put on a few pounds. They had bonded in a way Bruce had never bonded with his previous foster children. Clint was a difficult child, his issues were well hidden and he took a long time to grow comfortable with Bruce. They were comfortable together, their home a quiet oasis for them both. He was allowed to touch Clint now, for longer periods and with less forethought. The boy had yet to really seek his comfort though. 

They went to dinner that night to celebrate the removal of his cast, Clint would need to see a physical therapist for a few weeks to regain strength in his arm but he could now use it. Bruce had offered to take him to any restaurant in the city. Clint had elected for McDonald’s drive thru.

The next morning, Clint was surprised to hear a knock on the door and he ran to open it. 

“Use the chain,” Bruce shouted from the kitchen. 

Clint peered through the gap in the door before he opened it up all the way. It was Jenna. 

He took off to get Bruce, “It’s Jenna.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone would like to read more I'd appreciate a comment or even a kudos just to know someone other than me (and those loyal few) want to see more. Thanks!  
> -Kai


	6. Time's Up

Bruce came out of the kitchen drying his hands. “Hi, Jenna. Clint go eat while it’s hot, orange juice is on the table and please use a fork.” The boy was still in the habit of pushing food straight from the plate and into his mouth, something Bruce was desperately trying to break him of. 

“Hi, Bruce,” she sat down on the sofa as Clint went to the table. 

“What’s the surprise visit over?” Bruce asked. 

She opened up her folder. “Well, there’s a bed open at one of the boys’ homes. I was thinking you might want to sign some paperwork so we could transfer him.”

The man was gob smacked for a moment. He knew in the back of his head this was temporary but it was also rather abrupt. Clint was still recovering from malnutrition, he needed time with a physical therapist, he had to visit a psychiatrist, and he was still having nightmares and panic attacks. Not even to mention his social anxiety.

“Into a group home?” he questioned. “There’s no regular foster care available?”

She shook her head sadly, “None that have agreed to take him.”

Bruce looked over at the boy. “I can keep him for a while longer until a real home becomes available.”

“I know that, Bruce, but you only have a sixty day placement allowance. You’re not licensed to keep him longer than that. We are edging into fifty-seven days. His spot at the home is ready.” Jenna held out the paperwork. 

“I forgot about that,” Bruce sighed. He was going to have to let Clint go now. He ran his hands through his hair, rubbing at his glasses. He didn’t know why he was getting so upset, he’d known this was coming. He took the paperwork and signed it. “When do you need to take him?”

Jenna gave him a kind look. “Today, Bruce. It has to be today. He can settle in tomorrow and then he’ll have the weekend to adjust. On Monday, he’ll be ready to start school. I’m sorry I didn’t give you more warning but if he doesn’t take this spot there won’t be another for a while.”

“School?” Bruce all but shouted. “He’s not ready for that. He’ll be eaten alive. He’s not academically or socially ready. He’s nervous around other people, especially strangers.”

“We have talked to the school and they’ll have services ready to help him. He’ll be okay.”

Bruce was quiet for a long moment. “Okay, so… that’s it then.” He stood, his legs felt shaky, as he walked over to the table where Clint was sitting rigidly. The boy hadn’t touched a thing, his face hard. 

He pushed away from the table. “I gotta’ go?” he questioned, not looking at Bruce.

“Yeah. A spot at one of the… dormitories has opened up.”

“’Kay. I’m ready.” He stood and marched out into the living room. “Can I get my clothes?”

“Of course,” Bruce said, following in Clint’s wake. 

Clint grabbed up his canvas bag from the circus and stuffed in the clothes and slipped on his shoes, tying the laces into ragged knots. He stuffed in his purple socks too after a moment. He snatched up his bow. 

“I’m sorry, you won’t be able to take that Clint,” Jenna told him as nicely as she could, holding out a hand for it. “It could get broken or someone might try to use it.”

Clint’s hand tightened around the bow, almost to the point where Bruce was sure it was going to crack. “We have a place to keep these types of items until it’s okay to return it to you.”

The blonde shrugged, dropping it on the bed. “You can toss it out.”

In his own head, Clint was internally berating himself. He was going to cry. He was sure of it. He couldn’t cry. He refused to cry. He swallowed the tears, letting his nose run rather than sniffle. He didn’t want to leave the bow but he had to. He always had to leave things.

He said nothing about the purple pillowcase and duffle bag he was leaving behind. It was something the next kid might be able to use. 

He took a chunk of cheek between his teeth and chewed hard. The pain refocused him and he pulled his bag on his back. The boy looked to Jenna, “You ready?”

She smiled kindly. “Sure, my car is downstairs.”

Clint hefted his bag one more time; he looked longingly at his bow and the bed behind it. He forced his eyes away, before meeting Bruce’s eyes with his own. “Bye, Bruce.”

Bruce tried not to be disappointed when Clint walked away, waiting patiently at the door for Jenna to catch up. 

“Thanks, Bruce,” she said with a smile. “I appreciate you taking him in.”

A minute later they were gone. 

Bruce’s apartment hadn’t felt so empty in a long time. He picked up the videos that they had rented and stuck them by the door to be returned, along with a few picture books that needed to go back to the library. He picked up a discarded sock, too small for his own foot, and a color crayon that had rolled across the floor. 

He looked over at his table. Clint’s breakfast was untouched on the table, the eggs congealing, Clint liked his scrambled eggs just a little bit runny. Bruce’s fully cooked ones were still in the pan. He grabbed the dish, and plate and all, threw it in the garbage can, the glass shattering at the bottom of the can. 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Clint was silent on the drive over to the home. It was a large building; at least it looked cleaner than his last one had. He got out of the car and followed Jenna up to the building. A lady opened the glass doors and ushered them inside. 

“Hello… Jenna, right?” 

“Yes and this is Clinton Barton, otherwise known as Clint.”

The lady smiled. “And you’re eleven?”

He nodded. No one would remind him to use words here. He felt his lip tremble.

“You’re a little smaller than I anticipated. You’ll go with the boys in the tiger room then. They are the eleven to thirteen year olds. They said you’ve been at a group home before?”

Clint nodded; he’d been in group homes almost too many times now. “Okay so you already know how this works. I’m Deb and I’m the house mom here. We have nineteen kids, all boys. Wake up is at 6:45 am and breakfast is on the table at 7:30. The school bus leaves at 8:00. Everyone is at school right now, so you’ll be able to settle in before they get here.”

She walked to a room and unlocked the door. Inside there were three sets of bunk beds. All made nicely with a nametag stuck to the side of the bed. She gestured to the bed with the empty nametag. “This’ll be yours.” She opened a drawer and he dropped the entire bag into the drawer before closing it. 

“There are some rules. We don’t allow stealing, no hoarding food, no fighting, and no back talk. If you break any of the rules the consequences are on the wall. You will lose TV time, game time, recess time, and any fun activities we do. Do you understand?”

He nodded again.

“Okay, I think we are all settled then,” she said, taking the papers from Jenna’s hands. 

Jenna handed Clint her card again, reminding him to be careful with his arm before walking out. 

“All the doors have an alarm on them Clint, if you open them we know which one, okay? You can’t go outside unless you tell an adult and you have to stay in the yard,” she pointed out at a chain linked in area of asphalt with a set of monkey bars and some basketball hoops. Deb hung around for a few minutes until her phone buzzed and she was drawn away. 

Clint drifted to his space and took out a pen and his notebook. He could at least doodle; he chewed his cheek while he let his mind drift. 

In the circus, Barney had convinced him to stick his feet in a cement-mud mixture that hardened. Tiny the Strongman and his assistant had chipped away at the rock around his feet for an hour to free him. It had taken a while with hammers, spraying it with water, and scraping to get the rock to clear, then suddenly the rock fell away and his feet had felt naked and cold. Afterwards his feet had been raw and aching but he had still had to do his acts, that night, as he had slept in the horse trailer he had wished he had just left his feet in the rock. He felt like he had been back in that rock since he had left Bruce’s and he did not want out. Every time someone talked to him he felt like they were trying to chip away at him. 

When everyone came in he was pleased to see that most of his roommates were normal, there was one kid that seemed pretty angry but Clint avoided him. He didn’t realize how short he was until he stood by the other kids while waiting to get dinner. He knew he was short but he was at least five inches shorter than the next kid. And this time he didn’t have Barney to back him up; he’d have to make sure to steer clear of any trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and Kudos are caffeine for my posting.


	7. Life at The Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: Child abuse flashbacks with some detail. Use of R word. Ye have been warned.

In the morning he got up and waited in line to use the bathroom. The boy in front of him looked down at his socks and laughed. 

“Those are girl socks,” another boy pointed out. 

Clint looked down. “They’re mine.”

They laughed at him but left him alone. They are just jealous of my socks, he told himself. He felt a chunk of the rock around him fall away.

On Saturdays there didn’t appear to be much going on around “the place,” as most of the kids called it. If they all were good they were going to be allowed cookies and a movie. He stayed out of the way, spending most of the day on his bunk. He grabbed his notebooks at one point and climbed on top of the monkey bars, none of the kids ever appeared to use it and it reminded him a bit of the platforms of the circus or the fire escape outside of Bruce’s apartment. 

The names of the kids and the supervisors blurred in his head, he couldn’t remember and he didn’t care enough to try. During lunch the older boys had put together sandwiches and brought a tray outside with Kool-aid and chips. Clint took a sandwich and a handful of chips and broke away to go eat against the fence. 

One of the supervisors, a man, came over and crouched next to Clint. “You know, you can eat with the other boys?” he told him. 

Clint hunched down and nodded, carefully balancing the remains of his sandwich on his knee.

“I heard you were in the circus. That must’ve been exciting.”

Clint nodded again.

“You don’t like to talk do you?”

He shook his head, stuffing the rest of the food into his mouth. He felt the sharp buzz in his hands and his chest that meant he was close to crying. He stood and went back into “the place.” He wouldn’t let them see him cry. 

That night they had earned a movie and Clint joined them, mostly because he had to “at least try” according to the night supervisor. He took a chair in the back, sitting on the hard metal chairs in the gaming room. The movie was “Hook.” It was a movie Clint had heard of but had never seen. He liked it, until he saw the bit with the scorpion and the guy in the box, he slipped away when the man started to scream. Clint didn’t want to see that. He’d heard enough screaming in his life. 

He curled up on his bunk, breathing hard. 

::Flashback::

He hadn’t realized his mom hadn’t made sure father’s dinner was warm before she left to… wherever she went. When he had taken it from the oven he had thought it was warm. 

It was not and his dad was furious. 

Now he had Clint’s hand firmly in his pulling the boy’s hand towards him.

“Is this warm Clint?” he asked, pushing the boy’s hand into his rice. 

Clint shook his head. “Is this?” His dad flipped open his lighter and dragged Clint’s hand towards it. 

Clint knew better than to scream but the sudden terror forced the noise out anyway. He told his father it was hot. 

“It’s very hot, poppa. Very hot!” Clint told him, hoping that his father wouldn’t complete the lesson. 

His father looked at him closer, closing the lighter. “Are you sure? Do you want to check?”

The boy shook his head frantically. He did not want to check how hot the lighter was. His dad waited a minute before flipping the lighter open and sticking Clint’s hand on the flame. 

He shook away the memory. Clint remembered the beating afterward but mostly he remembered the screaming, his own, his mom’s, even Barney’s once he had seen his the flesh of Clint’s hand. He remembered his own screaming when the hospital had cleaned it.

He hated screaming. Another chip appeared in his rocky surface.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispered. 

The rest of the weekend was a blur and he was suddenly awake and getting ready for school with the other kids. He hadn’t been to school in five years, how was he going to handle this?

He ate his cereal numbly before stepping up onto the bus with the other kids. He hid his arms behind his new backpack, he was shaking so hard it was beginning to make his arm ache. He gripped his cheek between his teeth, smothering his anxiety. There were so many kids, all chattering, all shouting over each other. When they unloaded Clint was lost, one of the boys from his room pointed him towards the office and Clint stumbled inside. There were people running everywhere and he glued himself to the wall. 

Once the office had cleared a bit he put the crumbled sheaf of paper on the desk in front of the first person he thought looked official. The woman looked up from her computer and snagged the papers. 

“What can I help you with?” she asked gently.

Clint’s words were falling apart in his mouth and all he could say was “new.” 

“Okay!” She sounded more excited than she should in his opinion. “You’re from the group over on Second, right? You must be a bit nervous. You’ll be starting in Mr. Allen’s for math and science and then switch to Mr. Bryant for English and history. It looks like you are also going to meet with our resource specialist.”

He just nodded, his backpack clutched like a shield. He could feel the rock around him being smashed with a hammer. His head felt like it wasn’t balanced on his shoulders and it rolled ominously. 

She was nice and took him to the room and introduced him to the teacher. All he could do was nod and shrug as they talked around him. Clint was dizzy as he tried to stay on his feet. The teacher pointed him to a chair and he sat in it. He didn’t move for almost an hour. When the bell rang for break he about had a heart attack, breathing hard in his seat. 

The teacher, Mr. Allen his memory supplied, crouched down beside him after he had shooed the other kids out. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

Clint shrugged, how was he supposed to answer a question like that?

“You know, there’s not much they have told me about you. Can you give me some information?”

He nodded; he wasn’t going to start fighting with the teachers already. 

“Where were you before you came here?”

“Circus.”

The teacher’s eyes had widened. “The circus? Wow. What about your parents?”

“Dead.”

Mr. Allen let out a big breath, sitting back. “Huh. And when did you last go to school?”

Clint shrugged. “Second grade. I’m retarded.”

The man seemed to consider all this information for a few minutes. “You know… one day you’re going to write a book about this and I’m going to read every word. And you are very smart… don’t let anyone tell you different… Do you want to go outside?” 

That was an easy one; Clint shook his head hard and fast. No way.

“Understandable. You can relax in here, do you have a snack?” Clint shook his head again. 

Mr. Allen walked away before coming back and dropping a fruit bar on his desk, ordering him to eat before he disappeared through the partition wall to the next class. He chewed the bar quickly and leaned his head against the wall near his desk. It was the first time he had felt like he was able to breathe all day. 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Clint followed the other kids back into their dorm house but he turned and looked at the street outside “the place” and all the freedom it represented. He had proven to himself and all the teachers at the school that he was stupid today. The resource specialist had pulled him out of class after a nerve-shaking lunch; he’d thrown up his lunch in the bathroom and hid there until the bell rang. 

He had spent the rest of the day in “resource.” He could read; he knew he could, but apparently not at all like they had hoped. He hadn’t known the answer to the questions about science and math. His memory stopped at second grade. They hadn’t said anything though, they were too kind for that but the looks on their faces when they had been grading his test had betrayed everything. His eyes had picked up the key words on the report. They had written “unable” more times they he could number and “N/A” was checked more often than not, he didn’t know what it meant but he assumed it wasn’t good. He felt a piece of the rock around him chip away. He desperately tried to put it back on.

The next day they pulled him out of his class to work one on one with another teacher. She was kind enough but obviously frazzled and overworked. Clint muddled through his classwork and his homework was a lost cause. He tried. He really did. He went over the directions and remembered what the teacher had said in class but for anything but math he was almost hopelessly lost. The resource teacher had given him an impromptu lesson on how to multiply and divide so he could do the work; he had given up on the word problems. 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

“That kid is like a sponge,” Mr. Allen marveled, sitting down at a table in the teacher’s lounge. “He’s obviously lost but he can do math. Jeannie went over with him twice on how to multiply and divide multiple digits and he solves them. You can see him counting it through in his head and he just does it. His English is poor and his background knowledge is slim to none but he could be really smart.”

Jeannie broke in now. “And his memory… I don’t say much because I don’t want him to think he’s weird but when I tried reviewing flash cards with word sounds on it, he memorized it on the preview. He just picked up the cards without thinking. I’m trying to figure out how to teach him so he doesn’t have to rely on his memory and use the skill but I’m not sure that’s possible. Anytime I preview something he just memorizes what I already did and goes on.”

Mr. Bryant sat down with his lunch, a sad look on his face. “Yeah, his memory is great and all but I think that kid is close to a breakdown. It’s been four days and he doesn’t say anything. Sometimes he closes his eyes and looks like he’s just trying to breathe. His lips move sometimes but no noise comes out. I thought maybe he was having a medical issue but it just seems to overwhelm him. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to go on. I’m going to get the counselor to talk to him when he comes next week.”

_______________________________________________________________________

 

On the other side of town Bruce Banner was sitting down to a solitary lunch at his table, somewhere he had never eaten in all his time in the apartment but Clint had forced him to develop the habit. 

He looked over at the coloring pages he had found in a crayon box. He looked at the top one and remembered seeing Clint coloring it that first night. One arm braced on the paper the other coloring and his foot holding the bottom of the paper still. He didn’t have the heart to throw out the papers. 

He picked up the phone, the number he had dialed fifteen times and hung up on still on the redial button, and he hit it. 

“Hey, Jenna,” Bruce started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.... what do you think? :D


	8. Away From Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LIfe rolls on away from home. 
> 
> Warnings: Bullying, throwing up, and use of the R word.

“I was wondering when you would stop hanging up,” she said. “So either you’re calling to ask me out or you’re calling about your circus boy? I hope it’s your boy because you know I’m married.”

Bruce sighed through the phone. Jenna knew him. “So how do we get this started?”

“The paperwork is here and half-way filled out. I need you to come down and sign and I can start calling around to get time scheduled to look over your house and have a higher-up approve it.”

“That’s great, Jenna. How is he? Have you heard?”

It was Jenna’s turn to sigh. “They say he’s settling in fine but I can’t believe that. I’m sure he’s fine but whether he’s happy is another story. He started school on Monday and according to the tests the schools sent along he has a remarkable memory but he’s way behind academically. He’ll probably be moved from the regular Ed. classes.”

 

* * *

 

“Go to sleep!” Adrienne, one of the night supervisors, screamed across the dorm room. Clint startled awake, his eyes going wide as the woman screamed into his room. The other boys in the dorm were still awake, laughing and talking when they were supposed to be sleeping.

He tried to calm his breathing, Bruce had yelled at him once during his sleep he could handle this. Bruce had soothed him afterwards; there was no one there now.

* * *

::FLASHBACK::

  
He woke suddenly when the trailer rattled; his dad had slammed the door shut. He froze, he knew better than to let his dad know he was awake. Beside him Barney tensed as he heard his dad grumble. They were in the top bunk of the trailer, cuddled together for warmth.

But then Barney wasn’t beside him anymore, yanked from the bed by his father and tossed to the ground. Some days he thought his dad was Superman with how strong he was. He stayed still, even when he heard Barney screech in fear. There was a tug on his ankle and he was thrown to the floor beside Barney a second later, gasping when he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Get the fuck up, you retards! There’s groceries in the car, go get ‘em!”

Clint scrambled behind Barney to go to the beat up car. Groceries bought by his father were never very good. Mom bought sugary cereals, boxes of mac and cheese, and canned tuna... when she remembered that her kids needed food. Dad bought beer, bread, and peanut butter.

Barney grabbed the case of beer, while Clint grabbed the bag with a carton of cigarettes and bread. Clint climbed onto the counter and put the bread and peanut butter away, Barney unpacked the beer into the ‘fridge.

They were completely silent, they knew better than to disrupt Dad when “the game” was on. Barney shoved the carton into his hands and pointed towards Dad. He bit his lip and slunk over towards his dad in his lazy chair. He stood there until a commercial came on.

“Dad? Do you want these?”

The man’s head turned and Clint stayed still, holding the carton out. The man took them before turning aback around. Clint backed away quickly, disappearing into his bunk until he could breath again.

* * *

 

It had been a straining week since Clint had been moved from Bruce’s home. He felt like he was being squished but didn’t know how to explain it to the therapist he saw every Thursday, she chipped at his rock the most. How did you explain that? Did everyone feel like they were being crushed? Was this normal? Which feeling was normal? He sighed; he hoped it wasn’t this feeling. He felt like everything was cracking around him and he was running trying to close the cracks appearing.

School hadn’t gotten better. Jenna had called on Wednesday but Clint hadn’t been able to really talk to her. She had hinted that he might be moved soon; he felt another chip flick away.

The boys kept talking and Clint plugged his ears as he heard Adrienne rip the door open again. “God damn it!” she screeched. “GO the f*** to sleep! You will not be getting any TV time the whole weekend if I hear one more noise!”

His dorm mates went quiet as Adrienne shut the door, muttering about “little jackasses.”

In the morning, Clint sagged as he stumbled into class, sitting down far from the other kids and praying to get through Friday without incident. He had had a nightmare and his dorm mates had been unsympathetic, one of them had punched him in the arm for waking them up. He sat up in bed after that, his mind running wild with awful scenarios. He missed Bruce and his “Coke and TV” solution.

He hadn’t been able to stomach breakfast, he felt jittery, his leg bouncing as he waited for lunch to roll around. He was so hungry and he hadn’t been able to find a snack. He had been tempted to steal one out of a kid’s backpack but he hadn’t been able to work up the courage. The cracks were appearing and he felt raw.

Lunch came and he waited patiently for his food, taking whatever choice had the most food on it. He wasn’t quite sure what it was but it looked good. He picked a table with a few quiet kids on it and he put his food down. He ate as slowly as he could before one of the staff came to hustle him along. He scooped the food into his mouth and he could hear a little voice that sounded vaguely like Bruce, sighing and asking him to use the spoon properly. He didn’t need to do that anymore, no one cared how he ate or even if he ate. He went to find a spot to hide until lunch was over.

He found a lonely area out in the field, beside a fence post. He took a seat and waited for the bell to ring. The boy looked over as some his classmates saw him and laughed; he stood and walked away as they started to come over to him.

“Hey!” he heard shouted from behind him. He kept walking. “Hey!”

He was near the basketball court when the boy’s caught up to him. “Where are you from?” one of the group asked, surrounding him.

Clint didn’t know how to answer. He shrugged.

One of the boys put his hands on Clint’s back, and the preteen whirled around, backing away only to end up backing into another boy.

“Calm down, you little creep,” the boy in front of him said. “Do you talk?”

Clint nodded. “Yeah.”

“Are you retarded? The teachers don’t make you answer questions,” a boy to his left asked curiously. Clint’s eyes were tracking all the possible escape routes; he wouldn’t be able to get away without pushing the kids.

He shrugged. He was pretty sure he was a retard; a few adults and kids had told him so.

“He is a retard!” the biggest boy crowed, pointing. The group broke into laughter; one of the boys shoved him from behind.

The big boy stepped forward, putting him in a headlock. Clint panicked, kicking the boy behind his knee, buckling it and elbowing the boy until he hit the ground. He tried to run but another boy grabbed him by his shirt and shoved him to the ground, Clint scrambled on his hands and knees to escape, he saw the opening amongst the boys’ legs and took it. He dashed away, flying past students and teachers until he was near the front office of the school and he felt someone grab his arm, stopping him. He struggled, kicking his captor.

“Stop, Clint, stop!” someone shouted at him. His brain offered him the name Mr. Bryant but he kept fighting. His feet left the ground and he was suddenly inside a room and released. His eyes took half a second to recognize the lack of hiding spot; instead he crouched on the bed in the nurse’s office. Laying his head on his knees and breathing hard.

He threw up in the nearest garbage can, backing away with the can clutched to him when Mr. Bryant approached. Teachers couldn’t hit him, right? He hoped they couldn’t. They could yell but they didn’t hit… he was pretty sure. He heaved again, coughing and spitting up his hard earned lunch.

“You’re okay, Clint. Calm your breathing or you’re going to aspirate.” He didn’t know what that meant but he could assume it wasn’t good. The teacher tried to calm him, stepping closer, but he only dry-heaved harder. Mr. Bryant backed out of the room.

Mr. Allen stepped in a second later and shut the door, muffling the sound of the office. He took a seat in the chair next to the door, not guarding it but trying to make himself seem smaller. Clint hated when adults did that to him, he knew those tricks by now and he didn’t believe them.

He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself, “It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

The rock around his feet had exploded and now he felt raw and tender, like when he had been scrubbed with hot water and bleach.

Mr. Allen stepped out of the room and asked the nurse to call his social worker, the only person listed on his emergency contacts besides the group home. Jenna answered on the first ring and sighed when she heard the news.

“Let me send someone who might be able to help.”

* * *

 

 

Clint was still whispering, “It’s okay, I’m okay” even with the counselor trying to talk to him. Mr. Allen was sitting worriedly outside the room, watching one of his favorite students have a mental breakdown. He was supposed to be having prep time but he just couldn’t let the boy sit by himself.

The office door burst open and a young man rushed in already holding out his identification. “I’m Dr. Bruce Banner, I’m here to see Clint. His social worker called and…”

The office administrator nodded and pointed towards the nurse’s office.

Mr. Allen watched as this college student, came into the room. Was this a therapist that worked with Clint? He was too young to be a real doctor. “Who are you?” he found himself saying.

The curly-haired man held out his hand. “Dr. Banner, Bruce. I was Clint’s foster dad while he was recovering. Who are you?”

“His teacher. He’s… having a bit of a meltdown.”

Bruce nodded, looking unsurprised. “He’s not ready for this,” he mumbled, like no one could hear him.

He stepped into the room and sat beside Clint on the bed not touching him. “Can you get me a Coke?” he asked the therapist holding out some cash. “It’ll help.”

Bruce didn’t talk to Clint, letting him mutter on. He waited until the therapist came back with a Coke before talking to Clint.

“Clint?” Bruce asked his voice quiet. “Clint? I just want to know if you’re okay.”

The muttering had quieted but the rocking continued. “Clint?” Bruce asked again, he kept saying Clint’s name over and over until the boy seemed to be able to hear him.

The rocking continued but Clint stopped mumbling. Bruce cracked the soda and put it in Clint’s reach letting the boy decide when he wanted it. He placed a hand on Clint’s knee and the boy stopped, “Bruce?”

“Hey, Sprocket,” Bruce said quietly. “You want to lay down for a few minutes?”

Clint looked around suspiciously, seeming to finally come awake and notice all the adults around him. The blonde turned around to look at the wall behind them. Incrementally, he scooted closer and closer to Bruce until he was leaning against the older man, his head on Bruce’s shoulder. He picked up his soda and sipped it, not saying a word.

“If you could give us a few?” Bruce asked to the assembled adults. They shuffled out of the room and let it go quiet. He felt Clint’s body relax next to his own, leaning harder and harder on the man, until he was almost slumped.

Bruce took a deep breath. “You’re having a bit of a rough time, huh?”

Clint nodded, not looking up from his cola. “Sorry.”

“Clint, this is rough stuff. It’s way above your pay grade in my opinion but unfortunately we can’t stop it. There’s no need to be sorry. I do need you to speak to your counselor though and to tell the adults when you are having a rough day. What sparked this off?”

The boy sighed, shifting away from Bruce, the older man just shifted closer.

“I hate school,” Clint said softly. Bruce nodded as Clint continued.

“I don’t like my new fosters, I don’t get it. There are so many people. All the time. Everywhere. Why can’t I just stay at the circus? They weren’t bad. I had Barney. This life is so much worse. So much worse. I just…”

His words shook in his mouth. He felt the sharp pain that chased from his hands to his chest that meant he was close to crying. He breathed hard through his nose, reeling everything back in. “I just need to sleep for a long, long time.”

“It’ll get better. I promise.” He rubbed Clint’s back, trying to soothe him.

Clint shook his head. “You can’t promise that.”

They conversed for a few minutes, Clint didn’t feel better but at least he wasn’t rocking anymore.

Bruce felt horrible for having to leave Clint once again. He looked so small on the bed, lost. Bruce passed kids in the school and couldn’t help but take note how much shorter Clint was than them. This was just cruel.


	9. New York, New York

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo, the waves were super high in Newport, that's why this is late. :) 
> 
> You cannot plan for good waves combined with an empty weekend! If someone wants to come wax my board I can have another one up this Thursday. -Kai

On Saturday, Clint made his decision. He was going to run. He could make it to New York before Christmas; there were plenty of trains to get him there. He had seen the brochures at the university; if he could make it there he could figure out how to get to the train station.

He planned on Sunday, asking some of the older boys that used the bus, how to get to the University. They didn’t seem to care why and he gave up his dessert in return. They gave him a bus token and waved him away.

On Monday morning, he climbed onto the bus under Deb’s eye and unloaded quickly, making his way to the front of the school and slipping away with the hub bub of parents dropping off their students. He found the first bus that matched the words of the road the university was on and rode.

He was stunned when they pulled up outside what appeared to be the train station on the way to the university Clint ran up to the bus driver. “Is this the train station?” he asked breathlessly.

The lady looked confused for a second but nodded and Clint hopped off. The station outside looked quiet but inside it was teaming with people. He was disappointed in himself but plied a skill Barney and Buck had insisted he learn. He swung his arms around and loosened his body; it would make pulling so much easier.

He watched for a target and saw a middle-aged woman trying to coordinate a day planner and a rolling suitcase. He ran at the woman, his arm slipping into her bag and finding her wallet, all before she had time to apologize. Clint shuddered as she brushed his face, smiling kindly at him. His fingers dipped into her wallet and pulled as much cash as he could grab before walking away. He counted the cash, twenty-six dollars enough to cover a ticket and a meal. He sighed in relief; he didn’t want to have to do that twice. It was useful for grabbing extra money for spending at the circus but he had never been proud of it.

The next part of his plan was trickier. He needed to pull off the lie. Trains didn’t often check people; they were as bad as buses, and they didn’t care who was on board only if they paid. But a child going to New York would draw the attention of the wrong person. He fingered his state issued ID; most foster kids had one for some reason or another.

He watched the tellers and tried to find the one that cared the least. He watched the older gentleman that stamped the tickets the fastest and hadn’t even looked twice at a teenager that came through his line. He joined that line and rehearsed his lie in his head until he could say it without feeling sick. He was thirteen; his mom was sending him down to his grandma for the winter break.

He smiled at the teller and told him he needed a ticket for New York. The man started typing it out before looking at him a second time.

“You old enough to go by yourself?” he questioned.

“My mom said you’d say that. It’s not my first trip. Here’s my ID...” He pushed it forward and pretended to be confident. The man glanced at the ID but continued to enter in his information anyway. The man wasn’t going to do the math to figure out he was eleven. He smiled wider.

A few minutes later he had his change in his pocket and was walking towards where the train would come, trying to hide his shaking arms behind his bag. He felt like he could throw up but he focused on being with the circus soon. He had thirty minutes to wait. God he hoped the train came before the cops did.

* * *

 

Jenna received a call from the group home and dialed Bruce right away.

“Did Clint contact you?” she asked without greeting.

“No. Why? What’s happened?” Bruce asked, standing up from the meeting he was having with some of his research fellows.

“He’s missing. The school thought maybe he’d had a bit of a meltdown again and searched the school and then called the group home. They knew Clint got on the bus and he got off at school but no one has seen him since.”

Bruce’s mind instantly flashed to a kidnapping. Could someone taken him off campus?

She sighed into the phone. “Has he said anything to you? Do you have any idea where he might be?”

The older man shook his head. “I’ll go search around my house but I can’t think he’d go there. He’s smart and knows I’d just have to take him back. Are you sure no one has taken him?”

Jenna sighed. “I don’t know, Bruce. Okay… Okay. It’s time to call the police.”

The police were efficient radioing local bus drivers to see if they’d seen Clint and one remembered a blonde boy getting off at the train station. When they showed her his picture they confirmed it and went to the train station.

It took too long in Bruce’s opinion to get a call from Jenna; Clint had now been missing four hours and forty-five minutes. He was on a train to New York, nobody knew why or what he was doing there.

 

* * *

 

Clint eyeballed a guy with the train’s logo on his shirt with a radio. The older man hadn’t said anything, just took a seat across the aisle from Clint. Clint had wanted to hide in the bathroom on the trip but it was always occupied. He hoped the older man was just resting before going to check tickets but Clint had a feeling that he was being observed.

He got out of his seat and walked to a different train car, when the older man followed him he knew he’d been caught. The announcer told him they had five minutes until they reached the New York station. Clint calmly climbed the stairs and once on the second floor, out of the conductor’s sight jogged to the next car, he went downstairs again before squirreling himself away in a bathroom in the train car.

Eventually he felt the train slow and he cracked open the bathroom door. He could see the conductor’s back and Clint shot from the bathroom to the train doors. Waiting there were two officers, Clint hustled past them but heard the inevitable.

“There he is!” a man shouted. Clint took off at a dead run, sprinting up the grandiose staircase and into the main room. He slowed down when he saw how big it was and how many people were actually there. The shouting of the cops behind him forced him to move again.

There were shouts from behind him but he plowed up another set of stairs, and then he was on the streets of New York City. There were so many people he wanted to get to a wall just to get some space but he continued, forcing himself to think of it like when the circus would have a very crowded day and he would have to run an errand for Buck.

He kept moving pushing and shoving along with the crowds but didn’t anticipate running into an officer head-on, he had spent so much time looking behind him, he had forgotten to look forward. The man was tall and black, reminding him of Tiny, he snagged Clint’s shirt as he tried to pass.

“Where are your parents?” the man asked, Clint’s arm in his grip.

Clint had no answer for that. He hadn’t planned this far in the lie. He used his default shrug.

The officer frowned and touched the radio on his shoulder. “Dispatch: I have a boy matching the description of the boy from the train, can you read it to me one more time to be sure?”

“Clint Barton, age eleven. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Almost four feet tall, fifty-five pounds. Last seen with grey zip-up, green shirt, and blue jeans, carrying a black backpack.”

“Thanks dispatch, radio the train station that I have him.” He looked down at Clint, “Are you Clint Barton?”

Clint looked around and didn’t see another viable option. He nodded with a sigh.

The officer kept a firm grip on Clint’s arm as he escorted him to the waiting patrol car. He opened the front door and helped Clint into the front seat, putting on the child lock before getting in on his own and driving away. Clint took deep breaths; being in an enclosed space with a stranger was terrifying. Vomiting on the floor would only make this day worse.

“You gave some people quite a scare today,” the officer began. “Where are you from?”

Clint shrugged. So many people asked him that question and he never knew quite how to answer. He wasn’t completely sure which state he had lived in before he left the circus and how did you tell people you were originally a circus sideshow.

“Nah. I need a better answer than that. You hungry?”

Clint nodded eagerly. Two dollars hadn’t been enough change to buy a snack on the train.  
“I got two dollars,” he offered.

The big man laughed. “Well thanks, but I think I can swing the dollar fifty it’s going to cost to get you a hot dog. You like hot dogs?”

He nodded again; he really wasn’t a picky eater. “I’m Joe by the way and I’m going to take you to the station so we can sort this out. You need to give me some more information though. Why did you run?”

And like a dam, he’d been unplugged, spilling the past two weeks that he had tried to seal away. “I just… I wanted to get back to my circus. I want to go home.”

“Circus?” the man questioned, his eyebrows shooting up. “You were in a circus?”

Clint nodded. “I shoot a bow and sometimes if one of the guys is sick I help out on the trapeze or high-wire. The social worker took me away and I lived with Bruce until I was okay. Then they took me away from Bruce and took me to a group home. I just want to go home. I really want to go home. I can’t handle all these people.”

The officer, Joe, pulled the car over and gestured at a hot dog vendor outside. The man brought over two hot dogs and a couple of sodas. “You kind of came to the wrong city if you don’t like a lot of people around. New York is one of the most crowded cities on Earth.”

It took a while but eventually Clint was picked up from the police station and escorted back to Boston by a Boston police officer that happened to be investigating in New York. He didn’t relish the return to the group home. He’d be lucky to see the outside for the next two weeks.

Once doors were closed and officers and social workers were gone, Emma, one of the night supervisors screamed at him for twenty minutes and he was sent to bed with a peanut butter sandwich and water. It had not been a good day.

At least he had gotten to see New York.


	10. Home Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author Notes:  
> *Emotionally Disturbed teachers really do look out for their kids better than this but it is a frightening situation, especially for kids that don’t belong in ED. I’m just putting Clint in a rough room.  
> *Group homes like this one don’t really exist anymore but it is a dated story. I assume that group homes have a better standard of nutrition than this.  
> *Schools do not have a normal standard of nutrition. I know districts that have a great lunch program in a poor area and one that has a crappy lunch program in a well-off area. In both districts, it’s how the district has chosen to spend money. Don’t get me started on school lunches.

The next morning, he was quietly greeted as a hero amongst his age mates. They all wanted to know about what he had done and how he had done it. They lost interest after an hour or so of silence and left Clint to his room, where he was grounded for two weeks. He had an emergency meeting with his therapist, where he had stared at the man for an hour. His therapist ended the session with a call to his social worker. He had said everything he had needed to say.

At school, he was quietly moved to another classroom. There were more adults and less kids, several of the teachers were men and large. When one kid did not get to pick the ball he wanted on their way out to recess, he realized that not only the teachers were different but the kids were too.

The student went crazy and Clint felt pity for him as he threw himself to the ground, banging his head on the ground and screaming, kicking out at the teachers. The teachers had to “contain” him and he screamed. It scared Clint. He ran and hid along a wall between some bushes under the window outside the library. One of the teachers, a big one, came to coax him back to the room twenty minutes later.

Despite the kids, he liked the class work better, it wasn’t as hard and they spent more time talking him through it. But he was frightened of the other kids, not that he would tell them that. On the way out the door he had accidentally bumped into a boy with his backpack. The other student had proceeded to grab him by his backpack and tossed him to the ground. He had scrambled out of the way while the teachers restrained the flailing boy. One of the other teachers tried to talk to Clint but he had shot off to the buses, wanting to escape.

Every following day he walked on eggshells around the other kids, Mr. Allen and Mr. Bryant tried to talk to him in the lunch line but he ignored them. They had sent him to the crazy class.

A girl in class had scratched him with her fingernails and tried to bite him when he had taken the construction paper she had wanted. He forced himself to be the last to grab anything, waiting to see which kid would explode. They had made Christmas ornaments as an art project earlier in the week. They weren’t allowed to use scissors to cut the paper or ribbon and Clint was the only one that had followed the directions. One of the other kids had gotten frustrated and thrown a chair, his paint, and of course, his ornament.

He learned to stay clear of the other kids and withdrew more and more into himself. He ate down at the far end of the table and stayed near the class door during recess. He read picture books, he didn’t bother to complain when the kids ripped the books out of his hands and threw them. On Thursday, his therapist talked about pills, Clint ignored him.

He was still on the playground with the “normal” kids but they acted like he was invisible when he walked past them. He refused to leave the classroom for anything more than the bathroom and lunch breaks. There were too many people everywhere and he felt like his chest was slowly being caved in.

 

* * *

 

Bruce waited anxiously as the inspector explored his house. He had passed all the other checks; they had investigated his background interviewing neighbors and colleagues. He was lucky that they had pushed through Bruce’s request, both because of Clint’s therapist’s recommendation and his social workers urging. He knew he was low on their chart simply because of his age and career but Jenna, Amy, and other social workers that had worked with him had stepped up to vouch for him. Clint needed this badly. They had bonded and that gave him credit in their books.

The investigator sat down after she had patrolled the house. “You realize that you will be probationary for a very long time correct?” she asked.

“Yes, I understand I’m younger than the average foster/adoptive parent but I really do believe I can do this. Clint needs a permanent home. I am working on my research, I have a doctorate at twenty-three, I like to think I’m just ahead of the curve.”

She nodded and seemed to stare him down for a while before nodding and signing the paperwork. “You’re approved for a longer foster period. Adoptions take longer to process but this is the first step. You’ll need to continue counseling with Clint and will have to get approval from our office for his home schooling. I realize why that’s necessary but it is unusual you understand. You will be randomly inspected. You will give Clint up for interviewing at any time. Is that clear?”

Bruce nodded, eager. “Of course, that’s not an issue.”

She handed over a paper for him to sign; he was already standing up.

She smiled at him, “I’ll call Jenna and have her go get your boy. Merry Christmas”

 

* * *

 

Clint was just getting off the bus and walking up towards “The Place” when he saw Jenna’s car turn into the parking lot. It was Friday and the boys were officially on their “holiday break,” which to Clint meant a solid two weeks stuck inside. Jenna was probably bringing in a new boy, one of the eighteen year olds had aged out a few days back. When she entered his room though and smiled he knew something was up.

“Clint, can we talk?” she asked, sitting on the bed beside him.

“Am I going to the loony bin?” he asked quietly. Some of the other boys had mentioned that he was crazy and they would send him to the loony bin.

“No, Clint,” Jenna said, ignoring his recoil as she went to brush his hair. “I wanted to talk to you about Bruce. Did you like him?”

Clint sighed; of course he had liked Bruce. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to stay with him?” she asked.

The blonde looked at her suspiciously. “I thought I couldn’t anymore. His time was up.”

She gave him a bright grin. “Bruce has been working very hard for a few weeks now and he got approval to keep you for a lot longer, until you’re adopted. It would mean leaving the school you’re at once he’s approved to home school you and leaving here. Would you be okay with that?”

“Yes!” Clint said eagerly. “We can go? Now?” He climbed off the bed and grabbed his bag.

She helped him grab his stuff and he packed it without a question. All he had to do from now on was keep Bruce happy. He picked up his present from school and carefully set it in his bag, before zipping it closed.

 

* * *

 

Bruce waited anxiously for Jenna’s call, with luck Clint would be coming home today. She said he might want a day to say goodbye or even a weekend to give an answer. God, he hoped he hadn’t screwed this up. Clint had been so heartbroken when he had had to leave and now he was being asked to dump everything and move again. He wouldn’t blame Clint if he said no.

His phone rang; he answered it before it finished its first ring. “Jenna?”

“Hi, Bruce,” Jenna answered. She sounded happy, that was good. “I hope you’re ready, Clint’s taking his stuff to the car now.”

He laughed into the phone. “I’m ready… Crud. I need dinner on the table.” He said goodbye and hung up. He went and checked on Clint’s room, the sheets were washed and the purple pillow front and center.

He made his life easy and grabbed a take and bake pizza from across the street along with a movie. He had the mixings for salad in the refrigerator and half a gallon of milk. He needed to go grocery shopping. He would get Clint up early in the morning to shop, the crowds would be smaller then.

After what felt like an abysmally long wait Bruce heard a tentative knock at the door and he flung it open. Jenna was at the door with a nervous Clint behind her. She breezed in and handed him some paperwork to sign. Bruce smiled and beckoned Clint in.

“Hey, welcome back,” Bruce greeted.

Clint nodded shyly. “You know where you room is, you can drop your stuff off in there.” The boy nodded again and trotted away.

Once Clint was out of earshot, Jenna leaned in. “He was thrilled to leave. He didn’t hesitate but he got really quiet once the doors closed and we were on our way. I’m sure he’s got a million things flying in his mind. I wouldn’t push him right now. He’s had a rough time. They put him in the Emotionally Disturbed class because of his behavior and he’s been refusing to talk to his counselor. The counselor is going to prescribe him something for anxiety.”

“Shit,” Bruce cursed quietly. “Don’t even forget Christmas is right around the corner, that’s probably not helping.”

The blonde came back into the room and stood nervously at the edge of the room. Bruce pointed to the couch next to him and he smiled to himself when Clint plopped down beside him. Jenna handled their paperwork and disappeared.

He looked over at Clint as he shut the door behind Jenna. The boy was fidgeting with the ends of his long sleeve t-shirt looking at Bruce from underneath his eyelashes. Bruce decided that being a bit emotional was expected right now.

“Feels like old times, huh?” he asked. He sat down, jarring Clint on the cushion next to him. Slowly so as not to startle the boy, he wrapped one arm around the boy’s waist and pulled him in. “I missed you,” he said. “I didn’t have anyone to talk to. The plants don’t listen to me as well as you would think.”

Clint huffed out a laugh, leaning into Bruce’s hug. The laugh turned into a half sob, the boy tried to pull away but Bruce pulled him back. The boy threw himself into Bruce, burying his face in Bruce’s shoulder, as if he did it hard enough no one could hear. Bruce sat him in his lap, rubbing his back, letting the boy get it out. He sobbed harshly, loudn barks of tears. Clint’s fingers flexed on his shoulders; his nails hadn’t been trimmed in a while and Bruce held in a hiss of pain.

The oven timer dinged and Clint sat up, his weight on Bruce’s knee. His face was splotched and dotted with tears and snot. “The pizza is going to burn,” he said, his voice shaky.

“It’ll be fine. You like burnt pizza,” Bruce told him. “You feel better?”

“No,” Clint answered. “I’m hungry… and I just like my pizza crispy.”

Bruce let out a chuckle and ran fingers through Clint’s rough, thick hair. It reminded him of a scrub brush. He also noted that his boy needed a haircut. “Okay, salad then pizza. Do you want to eat at the table or coffee table?”

“Regular table,” Clint replied, following Bruce into the kitchen.

“Set the table, get the plates, and get out the salad and dressing, please,” Bruce told him.

They fell into their routine, Clint scarfing down food like it was going to run away and Bruce reminding him to use a fork. He still tended to push food into his mouth rather than scoop it up. He burned his mouth with cheese, nodding when Bruce begged him to slow down.

“What’ve you been eating?” Bruce asked, when Clint shoveled in his third slice.

Clint shrugged.

Bruce frowned over at him, as he polished off his own slice. “Words, Clint.”

“I had a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. I don’t like those. Spaghetti. Casserole. I don’t know what I ate at school but it wasn’t too bad. One day we had hamburgers and we could put any type of sauce we wanted on it! And they had macaroni with hamburger bits in it.”

“What about fruits and vegetables? Your nutritionist said you needed to continue work on that.”

The boy shrugged again, licking his plate. “We had a vitamin in the morning and we always had corn or green beans with dinner. They don’t make you eat vegetables at school, sometimes they give you fruit cups though.”

Internally, Bruce gagged a little, that was a lot of processed foods for one little body.

“Tomorrow we are going grocery shopping and we are not getting any canned vegetables. Chef Boyardee is the only cans we use here and only because I get lazy.”


	11. Nerves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Child abuse flashbacks and panic/anxiety attacks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that I've been MIA. I went on a few job interviews (which sucked) but I also went to the premiere of The Lone Ranger (and it is gooooood!). It's really funny and action packed. I've got a new story brewing because of it. ;)

Grocery shopping became a bit of a hazard early into the trip. Clint hadn’t been forced to go to a store in a few weeks, thus he had regressed. Clint was frozen and refused to let go of the basket or Bruce. So Bruce was forced to push it with Clint in front of him, the boy’s hands firmly gripping the cart’s handle and Bruce’s jacket.

Bruce not only got them enough food to stock the fridge for a few weeks but also managed to find a Christmas tree on the lot next to the grocery store and stash it in the back seat. They bought a few ornaments; Clint’s picks were unsurprisingly purple. The boy thought it was hilarious that the top of the tree hung out the window as they drove. They dragged it upstairs and set it next to the fire escape.

“It looks like Charlie Brown’s tree,” Clint said with a half grin.

Bruce rolled his eyes, “You picked it out!”

Clint methodically unpacked every Christmas ornament and tree decoration they had picked up. He set them carefully on the floor in an organized pattern while Bruce started their lunch.

“Hey! I’m going to make gingerbread, do you want to help?” Bruce shouted from the kitchen.

He heard a clatter as an ornament hit the ground.

“Clint?” Bruce said, peeking around the corner. “You okay?”

The boy was sitting on the floor trying to reorganize the lines of ornaments, he was flushed a charming shade of red.

“Fine,” he mumbled, trying to corral the rolling plastic ornaments spilling across the floor.

“What happened?” Bruce questioned.

Clint shrugged.

“Words, Sprocket.”

He sighed but answered. “You scared me. I kicked the ormanents.”

“Ornaments,” Bruce corrected. “So… gingerbread? You’ll like it. Cream cheese. Ginger. Sugar.”

The blonde boy looked up, a shy grin on his face. “Yeah.”

They spent the afternoon together, finally settling with little loaves of fresh gingerbread everywhere, including their plates, while they watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a classic.

In the morning, Bruce told Clint to stay late in bed. He was just going to go over to his university to pick up some paperwork and if he needed anything to go next door. Clint had nodded and went back to sleep. In reality, Bruce just needed time to do a bit of shopping.

He found a set of stockings as well as some candy. He sped through Wal-Mart tossing things into his cart when he saw purple or something he thought Clint would enjoy. He knew he would regret the Legos when he stepped on his first one but every kid deserved a set of Legos. There was a little art set and some doodle pads. He wasn’t sure what the average eleven year old liked but despite his inner protesting he bought a Nerf gun and a football. He at least knew how to throw a football, though sports had never been his strong point.

He found a thick purple hoodie and a pair of snow boots. They were expecting snow any day now and Clint would need the protection.

When he got home he was alarmed when he felt the door was unlocked. He had reminded Clint to never leave the front door unlocked. He opened it up and didn’t see Clint on the couch. Had Clint left? He shoved Clint’s presents into the nearest closet.

“Clint!” he shouted, jogging to the boy’s room. The bed was empty, so was the closet, and underneath the bed. “Clint?!”

He grabbed the phone on his way past the couch, opening the pantry he didn’t see Clint and the fire escape was empty. The bathroom was empty and he was halfway through the social services emergency number when he opened his own bedroom door.

There was Clint, curled up with one hand on Bruce’s laptop. “Clint,” he whispered, sagging against the door. He hadn’t been that frightened since Clint’s jaunt to New York.

“Bruce?” Clint sat up, still dazed from sleep.

Bruce walked over and sat beside Clint, “Yeah. How’d you sleep?”

“Good, feel better…” He hesitated before asking, “Where were you?”

The older man frowned. “I went to the University to grab a few things before the break, I told you before I left… Do you remember?”

The boy shook his head. Bruce felt awful; Clint must’ve been frightened to wake up completely alone like that.

“I’m sorry. From now on I’ll write a note too, just so you know where I am and what to do.”

“Okay,” Clint nodded, scrubbing at his face.

Bruce tread a little deeper into the water that was Clint’s mind. He tried to not upset the boy but it was better that he did it now rather than let it blow up in his face later. That’s what led to Clint running to New York. “Why did you come sleep in here? Were you a little freaked out?”

He looked away, staring at his fuzzy socks for a moment. He nodded.

“I need words, Clint.”

Clint sighed aloud. “I didn’t like it.”

“Why?” Bruce wondered.

Clint picked up the sheets, twining and yanking on them like he would tear them. “I… thought you weren’t going to come back. I found your computer and know you need it for your work… so I figured you’d have to… wake me up to get it. I went downstairs… Your car was gone.”

Bruce scooted close to Clint, letting the boy relax against him. “I don’t plan to leave you, Clint. I know you don’t believe me but we’ll talk before we separate again. I promise you, I’m not going to just abandon you. Last time, we didn’t get much time to talk but I’m approved to keep you for a very long time now.”

“’Kay,” he answered quietly. “But… if you’re going to dump me off, can you tell me so I can get my stuff?”

“Clint? Let’s make it clear… I’m not going to be dumping you off, ever. If I leave you it’s because there’s a better home for you to go to.”

Clint nodded his head but he didn’t really seem to believe Bruce. They had had enough of this serious stuff. Bruce picked Clint up and tossed him over a shoulder and started walking.

“Bruce!” Clint was indignant. “Lemme down!!!”

The older man jiggled Clint a little on his shoulder before dropping him on the couch; the boy was hiding a smile.

“Come on downstairs,” Bruce urged. “I have stuff in the car and I’m too old to bring the rest of it up.”

Clint followed him down to the car, still a bit jumpy but Bruce thrust bags into his arms before they made their way back upstairs.

Bruce had him drop the bags in the living room, “Okay, time for winter clothes. If you lose these I will not be happy, all right? I understand that it happens sometimes but you’re old enough to keep an eye on your things okay?”

The blonde nodded, a light in his eyes.

“This is a lightweight rain jacket. In case we have to go out when it’s wet. Remind me to write your name in the tag. These are rain/snow boots. If it’s wet out, you’ll use these and keep your regular shoes somewhere else. Gloves. I hope you know what these are for…” he trailed off.

“Yeah, I never had a pair. The other kids wore them though.” Clint took the black gloves reverently, smiling at them.

Bruce’s stomach clenched. What eleven-year old had never had his own pair of two-dollar gloves? He shook it off and continued on. “And here’s two sweatshirts, again, if they get wet tell me so we can hang them up, they don’t go on the floor.”

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Bruce sighed as he pushed away from the desk in his room. He had spent most of the day teleconferencing with his colleagues and he felt bad for ignoring Clint, leaving the boy to entertain himself in the living room. He peeked into Clint’s room and saw that the boy was drowsing against the window, watching the snow drift down. He had built himself something of a nest, until his bed was level with the window.

“Hey, Clint, I’m going to make an early dinner… anything you want?” he asked softly.

He received a sleepy grunt and a hand wave in reply. Soup and sandwiches it was then. Clint loved soup and sandwiches, which made Bruce’s life very easy. He had made a huge pot of chicken soup and frozen it for their convenience. He turned on the stove to heat the soup and stepped back in the living room long enough to notice his whiteboard, with half of his painstaking calculations erased. In their place were random doodles drawn by an eleven-year-old hand.

“Clint!” he shouted, storming down the hall. “CLINT?” he yelled again as he threw open the door. “What in God’s name were you thinking?!”

The blonde was frozen on top of his nest, his eyes wide, still mussed from sleep, his face one of utter terror. “I didn’t… I don’t…Please, Bruce. Please,” he babbled, his voice high and shaking.

**Flashback**

_Clint had dropped a cup. He hadn’t meant to drop the cup but milk was everywhere now._

_“GOD damn it!”_

_To make it worse the splash had landed on his dad’s newspaper._

_He had two options right now. Option one, run, hope his dad didn’t catch him, and get an easier beating after hiding for a few hours; he’d miss dinner though. Option two, stay still and beg, sometimes that was the easier beating and he’d get to eat dinner._

_His father blocked the door and window. He picked option two._


	12. Wow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint is talented.

Bruce took a step forward but he stopped when Clint shrank back, flinching away. “I promise… Sorry… I don’t know… I will…” He held his hands out, like he would fend off Bruce.

The older man took a step back and a deep breath. He had to remind himself that Clint was a child and shouting wasn’t going to help. He had frightened an abused child from sleep. He was going to hell.

Clint was still muttering, “I didn’t… I can’t. I’m sorry. I don’ know…Please.” He held a hand up to stop Clint’s words.

“I’m sorry,” he insisted. “I’m so sorry. Just calm down, I shouldn’t have yelled but I am angry. What happened to my whiteboard?”

Clint’s eyes widened when he realized what he had done. “I… thought… did you still need… the numbers?” he asked, quaking.

“Yes, Clint. Those are part of my work. You can’t just erase it because you want to draw. You need to ask. You have your own papers to draw on.”

The boy’s hands were shaking, his body trembling and Bruce resisted the urge to scoop him up. Clint wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment right now. “Do you realize why what you did was bad?”

“I should’a asked first,” Clint said, despite the shaking his voice was rock steady. “I can fix it?” Clint offered.

“No, that’s not something you can just fix. That’s hours of work for my research that I’m going to have to do all over again.”

Clint seemed to shake harder at the news, his eyes looked wet but no tears fell. “I’m… Please…Please.”

“You won’t have any TV for today or tomorrow until I get that work done, understand?”

Clint nodded, looking at his fuzzy socks. “You also have to go and… sharpen my pencils and wipe down all the mirrors and windows in the house, okay?” The boy nodded again.

“Come here, Clint,” Bruce implored gently. The boy couldn’t seem to get his body to work; Bruce knew why and was saddened that Clint would think that of him. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, being startled awake by a screaming man had probably never gone well for him in the past.

As if he were of the walking dead, he stumbled on timid feet towards Bruce, his eyes cowed and shaking.

He went to his knees and pulled Clint’s stiff body into a hug. He held Clint for just a second before the boy struggled free from his arms and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom, vomiting loudly. Bruce rubbed Clint’s back while he dry heaved, the boy coughing and spitting.

Bruce felt like the worst person ever, Clint was crying and heaving as the anxiety took its toll on him. The stress the poor boy was under, being taken away from dead and abusive parents, towards a system that had tried but failed in some areas, ripped from the carnival he loved, abandoned by his brother, to surgery, to foster care, to a group home, to school, and finally back to foster care. Frankly, Bruce thought it was a miracle that Clint was as normal as he was.

Bruce patiently wetted a rag and wiped Clint’s face clean, ignoring the smell and fluids.

“Feel better?” Bruce asked after he gave Clint a sip of water.

The blonde spit and nodded, leaning against the sink as he tried to calm himself. Eventually he turned and washed his face, taking a deep breath to settle himself down. Bruce knew that internally Clint had to be mumbling his “Okay” mantra as he had begun to call it.

Gently, readying himself to release Clint, he pulled the boy into a hug. Clint was still for a few long moments before finally sinking into Bruce. He rubbed the boy’s back for a few long moments before releasing him.

“Come on, dinner’s going to be ready in a few and we are making sandwiches to go with the soup.”

“Sandwiches. Yum,” Clint mumbled, following on Bruce’s heels.

For the rest of the evening Clint was uncomfortable in Bruce’s presence but had seemed to accept the fact that Bruce wasn’t going to beat him. He had dutifully washed the windows and wiped his drawings off the whiteboard. He had quietly sat on the couch without a smile or a peep until Bruce had told him to go to bed. Bruce had stared at the whiteboard for a few minutes depressed that he was going to have to start work again, this would put him a day behind. He put his marker down; he would do it tomorrow.

He went to Clint’s room and reminded the preteen that he needed to brush his teeth before bed. Clint nervously got into bed and Bruce took a seat on the edge of the boy’s bed. Clint’s stack of pillows shifted with Clint on top. He tossed a blanket over Clint, swamping the kid.

“Want me to tuck you in?”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean? I seen that on TV.”

“It means to get the blankets around you so that you are warm.”

“Oh, okay,” Clint said, turning onto his stomach. “You can do that.”

Bruce smiled to himself and pulled the blanket around Clint’s legs, making sure his feet were tucked in, before laying the top of the blanket of Clint’s shoulders.

“Clint…” Bruce began. “I know it’s hard to believe but I’m never going to hit you. I’m never going to hurt you. I’ll try not to yell but I will forget. I won’t call you names. My job is to protect you... I’ll see you in the morning… Do you want pancakes?”

“French toast?” Clint asked.

“Okay.”

* * *

 

The next morning, he got up and flipped on the coffee maker. He had an hour before Clint was due to wake up, meaning an hour to work before he had to make breakfast. He waited for the pot to fill enough to make his first cup and stumbled out to the work area he had created in the front room. He did a double take when he saw the whiteboard was now filled in again. Beneath his previous work were more equations, correct equations. The ones he had finished a few nights back.

The handwriting was shaky enough that it looked less like it had been written and more like it had been drawn. The letters in Greek weren’t properly formed and the symbols were close enough to the norm that they were recognizable but this was not the work of someone familiar with physics.

He peeked into Clint’s room and walked closer, on the side of Clint’s open hand was the telltale smudge of whiteboard marker. Could Clint have done this?

He sat transfixed for a moment in front of his whiteboard. His mind was telling him that an eleven year old couldn’t have done this but Occam’s razor suggested it was the only explanation. Rather than try to question it he spent the morning checking the math. It had all originally come out correctly, so why not a second time?

When Clint did stumble out into the living room, he looked shyly over at Bruce before darting to the kitchen.

“Clint? We need to talk,” he said, not chasing the boy.

Clint came out then, swallowing hard before stepping up to Bruce. “Did I fix it okay?” he asked.

“Yes, you did. How… How did you do this?” Bruce pointed towards the whiteboard.

“I remembered what it looked like so I made it look like that again.”

Bruce turned back to the whiteboard, gaping a little before turning back. “…But how? Do you remember the way the numbers and shapes went or what?”

Clint shrugged.

“Words, Sprocket.”

“It’s a… picture? In my head?… I just remember it.” The boy shrugged helplessly.

Bruce shook his head, stunned. “Wow. You realize most people can’t do that?”

Clint shrugged again. “Oh.”

“I mean… I can’t do that… at least not like that.”

Clint looked embarrassed now. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Bruce reassured him. “It’s very cool. I didn’t realize you had that good of a memory. Can you do it for everything? Can you remember what I was wearing the first day we met?”

The boy frowned for a second. “You had black pants, scuffy brown shoes, and a green shirt with a button missing at the collar. And your glasses.”

Bruce remembered the outfit exactly, he had been dressed for a meeting with his supervisor that morning. “Anything else? What else did you see?”

Clint focused harder, his nose scrunching up. “You had a black smudge on your hand, on the big thumb. Your right shoe had a lot of mud on it. You had two pens in your pocket, one with a green cap and the other had words on it, it was the twisty kind of one. Your pants weren’t wrinkly.”

Bruce was stunned. “What day did we meet?”

“I don’t know… am I supposed to know?”

“No, no. I’m just… wow. That’s very cool... How about breakfast?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you like, send a kudos or a comment my way. Better yet, send some happy thoughts my way! RL is a punk.


	13. Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Bruce's first Christmas

Clint nodded and followed him to the kitchen, where he showed the boy how to make French toast, Clint apparently liked his extra egg-y. His toast was almost more egg than toast, Bruce was just happy to get the protein into him. He made extra and planned to make French toast sticks for Clint later in the week.

He made Clint shower so that he could trim his hair and then found some nail clippers and showed Clint how to trim his nails, carefully trimming each nail for him.

The boy needed some fresh air, since he wouldn’t be seeing the TV for the rest of the day it was only prudent that Clint learn the neighborhood. Plus he needed more socialization time. “Do you want to go for a bit of a walk today? It snowed last night and we can test your boots out.”

“We can go out in the snow?” Clint wondered, shoveling syrup covered bites into his mouth with his fingers.

Bruce stopped himself from sighing. “Yes, if you don’t shovel your food anymore…. And use your fork. I know you can do it.”

Clint frowned but slowed down, carefully maneuvering the fork to stab each square. Bruce didn’t stop Clint from licking the plate though. The preteen still needed to put on weight. He was hoping that Clint had put on a few pounds, his ribs were slightly less prominent.

“Can I have coffee?” the boy asked, eyeing Bruce’s mug.

Bruce’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “No! What?! Who gave you coffee?”

“Tiny, the strong man. It helped me calm down and sleep. I like it black, please.”

“If you drink coffee, you’ll be short forever. Do you want to get taller?”

The blonde boy shook his head, “No.”

“Well… you’re still not getting coffee,” Bruce answered, his argument deflating. “Get dressed, we’re going out.”

He helped Clint put on his new boots and his heavy sweatshirt, as well as his beanie and matching gloves. He put on Clint’s dry jacket over the top before putting on his own clothes.

Soon they were out in the snow and walking down the street towards the corner store. He let Clint pick out a candy bar; he didn’t correct the man at the counter when he called Clint his son. The boy had smiled at that comment.

They walked farther before they saw an open field filled with snow. Clint plopped into the snow and made a snow angel, letting Bruce pull him up. He stared down at the little impression in the snow.

“That doesn’t look like an angel,” Clint said.

“It does, you just need to see it differently,” Bruce said confidently.

They wandered around and near the corner hospital was a lit outdoor tree. Clint was in awe, staring up at the giant ornaments. “Wow.”

Bruce wandered around the edge of the tree. He didn’t realize he had wandered out of Clint’s sight until he heard the boy’s panicked shout.

“Bruce!? Bruce?!” Clint shouted, starting to run down the street.

“Clint!” Bruce called, giving chase, something must be wrong.

The boy whipped around when he heard Bruce’s call, sprinting back to him. He ran into Bruce’s legs, fisting one hand in Bruce’s jacket. “Where did you go?” Clint questioned.

“I was on the other side of the tree. Are you okay? I heard you yelling.”

Clint had turned an interesting shade of red. “Oh, I thought… never mind.”

He knew Clint had thought he had been abandoned in the middle of a city and the boy still had the right to think that. One day he would believe Bruce wouldn’t ditch him and until then he would just have to reinforce it.

Bruce wasn’t going to embarrass Clint by pointing it out, instead he grabbed Clint’s hand and they walked a little farther. The preteen was visibly nervous about holding his hand but he wasn’t trying to pull away. Kids this age were usually too old to hold hands but fortunately Clint was very small for his age and no one gave them odd looks.

Back at their apartment, Bruce warmed up some hot chocolate and reminded him he had a few chores to finish while Bruce started on some research.

 

* * *

 

On Christmas Eve, Clint ran between excited and anxious. Bruce hadn’t really been able to nail down what was riling the boy up but he could imagine the gifts under the tree were part of it. Bruce had gotten up early and haphazardly pushed the presents into bags, the Nerf gun had been too big and ended up poorly wrapped.

Clint had anxiously inspected them, from a careful distance of course. He hadn’t touched a single one. When Bruce wasn’t looking, or so Clint thought, the boy’s eyes would dart between Bruce and the presents trying to figure something out.

The preteen was too old to believe in Santa so Bruce brought him the milk and cookies they had made that evening. He had smiled quietly at Bruce, his lip trembling as he bit into the cookies, stoically chewing.

“What’s wrong, Sprocket?” Bruce asked.

Clint shook his head but he began to speak anyway. Maybe Bruce’s “words” reminders were finally working.

“I just…” he began unevenly. “This is the best Christmas ever.”

Bruce chuckled and scrubbed the boy’s hair. “It’s not even Christmas until tomorrow.”

Clint nodded. “Already pretty great. Fosters don’t really have time for foster kids at Christmas. Though one year I did get a pair of new shoes. The circus doesn’t do Christmas; sometimes the Mexicans would cook some tamales and they’d give me some. My family… my dad… he didn’t… do Christmas. He… nothing. Anyway, this is a great Christmas.”

In the morning, Bruce was surprised to find himself the only one up when his alarm clock went off. He decided to make a small breakfast, thankful for breakfast burritos.

He finally went into Clint’s room, the boy was curled up beneath his blankets and Bruce finally dug him out enough to tap on his shoulder.

“Clint? Time to get up,” Bruce whispered. Clint drowsily came awake, blinking hard and swaying as he sat up.

Clint yawned and climbed from bed, searching for his purple socks in the sheets. “Brush your teeth and meet me in the family room.”

A few minutes later, Clint came in and Bruce pushed a mug of hot chocolate into his hands and a burrito. The boy sat down nervously but Bruce didn’t push him, putting on a Christmas movie he had bought a few days ago.

He waited for Clint to have relaxed a bit, the boy was chewing on his cheek and seemed to want to say something. “Do you want to open your presents?”

Clint shrugged, then nodded, then shrugged again.

“You okay? Do you want to say something?” Bruce asked.

Clint huffed, examining the remains of his hot chocolate, syrupy bits of milk. “I have something really dinky for you. If you don’t like it you don’t have to keep it.”

Bruce didn’t bother trying to reassure the boy. “Okay.”

Clint trotted off and came back with an origami box tied closed with red yarn. So it was something from school.

He gave Clint his stocking and took his own, unpacking it. The candy excited Clint and Bruce decided that he wouldn’t stop the boy from guzzling the chocolate covered molasses but he did remind himself that Clint needed to see a dentist.

Bruce made Clint another cup of hot chocolate while the boy played with a few of the knick knacks he had found to fill the boy’s stocking. He wasn’t going to be the parent that put fifty-dollars worth of stuff into a stocking. He was happy to put in a bit of candy and a few trinkets. Clint loved notebooks so he had found a few pocket sized ones with pens.

He handed Clint a present from the ones beneath the tree. The blonde hesitatingly pried out the tissue paper but couldn’t hold back a smile when he saw the stack of doodle pads, color pencils, and crayons.

“For your doodling,” Bruce told him. “And some lined paper in case you wanted to write.”

Clint nodded, tracing his hand over the brand new crayons. Clint was thrilled. He had never gotten his own new things. He could be like the other kids at school. They brought in their brand new boxes of crayons and he always got the sad, dull leftovers from school. Sometimes the teacher would slip him a new box of 8 but this was a 64 pack.

“Thanks,” Clint answered. “This… I like it.”

Bruce handed over another bag. It was a simple purple camouflage t-shirt he had seen in the hunting section and matching purple running shorts.

Clint did grin this time. “This is so awesome. I... Thanks”

“Thought you might like it… Now this is for later when the snow is gone. You are not using it inside.”

The younger man pulled out a Nerf football, purple and yellow. Clint tossed it in the air once but set it down quickly under Bruce’s raised eyebrow. He also opened the Legos, shaking the box and promising to clean them up for Bruce.

“One of my colleagues sent this over from England, he said it’s pretty good.” Bruce held out a little bag. “It’s a bit of a higher reading level but we can read it together if you like.”

Clint pulled out a book. “Harry Potter and the Phhh-ilo…”

“Philosopher’s Stone,” Bruce finished for him. “He’s an orphan wizard and that’s about all I know.”

Clint smiled. “You will read it with me?”

“Sure, it sounds really good.” He pushed over one final bag. “This is not to be shot AT anyone… but I figure until we can get some arrows for your bow this might work.”

Clint ripped off the paper covered in little Santa’s to pull out a Nerf gun. “Wow!” Clint exclaimed, struggling to pull the gun out of the boxing. Bruce clipped a few wires and released it. He let Clint fire it a few times, his eyes widening when the boy managed to hit the things he was aiming at, despite the poor armament.

“This…” Clint gestured around at the presents. “Thanks. I… best Christmas ever.”

Nervously he turned around and pushed his present across the coffee table to Bruce.

Bruce untied it carefully, there was barely any weight to it. Buried beneath one sad little piece of tissue paper was a spherical plastic ornament. He carefully lifted it out of the box, it was decorated with Santa and his sleigh pulled by eight little reindeer, Clint’s name scrawled across the red ornament. It was Clint’s handwriting, underscored by the year.

The older man looked closely at the ornament. Santa, his sleigh, and each of the reindeer were made from a fingerprint, Clint’s fingerprints. Carefully uniting each of the reindeer were lines of black Sharpie. One reindeer was bit smeared but it only made Bruce smile.

“These are your fingerprints?”

Clint nodded, looking at his Nerf gun.

“You did this?”

The boy nodded again, not looking up.

“This… I am... This is the best gift.”

“Really?” He seemed stunned by the news.

Bruce smiled. “I never knew what parents meant when they said, having your kid make your gift… but, yes, I really like it. I’m going to get to keep your little fingerprints forever.”

Clint gave him a pathetic frown. “My fingerprints aren’t little!” he said indignantly.

Bruce laughed, and grabbed Clint in a careful half hug, kissing the top of his head.

“Bruce cooties!” Clint howled, but didn’t pull away. They finished the movie, “The Muppet Christmas Carol.”

Clint shook his head when Bruce offered to put in “Home Alone.”

“I don’t like it,” Clint told him.

Bruce decided to ask why, he had slowly been prying more and more out of Clint, only when the boy seemed ready to tell why.

Clint sipped at his warm hot chocolate, his third cup. “I don’t like it when the guy burns his hand, and everything, screaming, it’s… not fun.”

The violence. Clint apparently did not like violence. He also probably did not like the idea of being abandoned by his family. Instead he put on “The Santa Clause,” one he had never seen before but ended up loving. Clint was curled up against him, his head resting on Bruce’s shoulder and for the first time in his life, Bruce felt like a true dad. Not a foster parent, but a dad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coffee helps me calm the freak down and sleep. It's soothing and my grandpa gave me a lot of it (black), I'm still tall (for a woman). However, I do not suggest giving kids coffee.


	14. Progress

Three days, later Clint went to his therapist’s appointment and Bruce waited outside. The therapist signaled for Bruce to join them after forty-five minutes. He introduced himself and Bruce was pleased to see this man was kinder than he had anticipated.

“Clint seems more confident while in your care. He had some regression while in the group home but I’m pleased to see he’s coming out of his shell again. I am still going to recommend some anxiety medication. I know he’s very worried about things that he shouldn’t be. I know he’s nervous in public. I know he needs more time in a stable environment but I think the medication might help. His anxiety is such that it’s interfering with aspects of his life, he exhibits PTSD and a lot of social phobia. He’s certainly touch deprived and I’m researching to see how to handle that. I’ve read reports from his school about his behavior and it is concerning. I’ve watched him get out of the car in the parking lot and walk into my waiting room. He’s all but shaking. I’m going to insist on continued visits with me and working with you.”

Bruce nods. “I would rather hold off on medication. I know his… social issues are going back and forth but I think it’s been a pretty upsetting time for him.”

The doctor nodded and wrote something down. “I can agree to that Dr. Banner but I want to see progress. Clint and I have discussed this and I’m sending homework for him. Whenever he gets upset or angry or anxious I want him to write in his journal and if he can he can read it to you. He has a hard time using words.”

Bruce smiled fondly. “I know. He nods and shrugs a lot.”

Clint snorted from his corner of the couch.

The doctors ignored him. “How does he do in public? Like a store?”

“He freezes up. If he can hold onto the cart or me we can make it through but we never shop for more than a half hour and he needs time to recover afterwards. If he gets too distressed by something he’ll throw up, which makes the stress worse.”

The man jotted down a few more notes. “Okay, we’ll keep that in mind. I encourage you to continue like you have. Take him out to places that are low stress but social. Places like a matinee movie, the park, the library, limited social interaction but exposure none the less.”

He stood and shook Bruce’s hand as they walked out the door. Bruce forced Clint to turn around and say goodbye to the doctor, shaking his hand.

“I don’t like talking to him,” Clint mumbled when he climbed into the car.

Bruce took this as progress, Clint was confiding in him. “Why not?”

Clint shrugged but Bruce gestured at him to continue. “He talks about things I don’t want to talk about.”

The older man nodded, “I understand that, that’s kind of his job though. He needs to talk to you to help you start to get better.”

“I’m fine!” Clint shouted, slamming a fist into his leg.

Bruce took a breath. “You’re not but you’re getting there.”

“I am fine!” Clint argued, putting his head in his hands.

There was no reasoning with Clint when he was like this so he bit his lip and stared forward.

“Do you think that it’s normal for a kid to be nervous to go into a store?” Bruce questioned. “Or go to school? Or eat in a restaurant?”

Clint turned to the window and stared out it.

* * *

 

On New Year’s Eve, Bruce was going to allow Clint to stay up and watch TV and eat nachos. They needed to make a run to the corner store though to get tortilla chips, Bruce was hoping to slip in some beans and meat to give Clint some sort of protein.

A group of men came in while they waited to check out, pushing past Bruce and he felt Clint lock up, stepping into Bruce’s side.

The men grabbed a few cases of beer and lined up behind them, laughing too loudly and staggering. Bruce felt Clint’s panting into his side, his hot breath going through his shirt. Bruce rubbed at Clint’s back.

“You’re fine,” Bruce whispered to his bowed head.

“Is this your boy?” the biggest man asked, too much into their space. Clint’s hand snagged Bruce’s hip.

Bruce nodded. “Yes, please back up though, he’s nervous.”

“Of me? Don’t be scared little guy, I’m not going to hurt you,” he laughed, he leaned down to Clint’s level where the beer smell permeated his nose best.

“Back the fuck off!” Bruce growled, his eyes nearly glowing in anger. “I’m not asking again. Back. Off.” Even in their drunken state they realized the look in Bruce’s eyes and quieted down.

Clint had stiffened and moved to bolt but Bruce clung to him, holding him closer. “Can I just pay?” Bruce held up a five dollar bill for a three dollar bag of chips.” The cashier nodded and Bruce tossed his money and walked out the door, ignoring the laughter of the still drunk men.

The blonde boy made it outside before throwing up in a snow bank. He dry heaved for a few moments before finally stopping. “You’re all right,” Bruce murmured.

Clint nodded quickly, shakily grabbing Bruce’s arm. “Can we go home?”

Back at their apartment Clint still wanted nachos, nearly demanding them. Bruce didn’t want to sway the boy so started to cook up his nachos. At least Clint hadn’t demanded nacho cheese, happily settling for cheddar.

When he felt Clint had settled down enough he prompted the boy into talking to him.

“Do you want to tell me why those people scared you so much in the bodega?”

The blonde shook his head, before adding a quick, “no” to his answer.

“Then you need to write about it,” Bruce insisted pointing to the journal. “I’ve still got to cook the meat, you have about ten minutes to write.”

Clint sighed aloud but slouched over to his journal, opening it and staring.

Once the food was cooked, Clint had written a little something but Bruce didn’t pressure him to see it. It was Clint’s business as far as he was concerned. They snacked on nachos and watched James and the Giant Peach and more of “The Land Before Time” movies.

Fireworks exploded outside and Clint flipped out of his seat, his back against a wall and breathing hard.

“Remember,” Bruce began, “we talked about fireworks going off.”

The blonde nodded and sighed, he still jumped when a firecracker banged outside but he eventually calmed down enough to nod off on the couch.

Bruce covered him with a blanket before taking to his own bed. Laid across his pillow was Clint’s journal, opened to the first page, today’s entry. When had the kid had time to do this? He could only assume Clint wanted him to read it. He still felt like it was an invasion of privacy, glancing at the page, his eyes were captured by his own name though and what was supposed to be a skim ended up being a full read.

_‘Bruse sez i gotta rite. This is stuped. Stuped. at the store ther wer sum drunks. They smeled bad. I dont like drunk peePl. dad was drunk alot. I dont like drunk peepl. Barney Wus drunk to. MoM was drunk. Dont like it. Bruse is guna say i need words. Drunk peple ar meen. Buck was meen. dad was relly meen. he hit. Bruse is not meen.’_

Bruce smiled. It was the worst spelling and grammar he had ever seen but the sentiment behind it was amazing. Clint needed to express more but he was trying and that was all he could ask of him.

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a lot more to come. This series is almost 70,000 words... and not totally completed.


End file.
